Boulder is a Stoopid Place

South Portland doctor stops accepting insurance, posts prices online — Portland — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine.

Dr. Michael Ciampi took a step this spring that many of his fellow physicians would describe as radical.

The family physician stopped accepting all forms of health insurance. In early 2013, Ciampi sent a letter to his patients informing them that he would no longer accept any kind of health coverage, both private and government-sponsored. Given that he was now asking patients to pay for his services out of pocket, he posted his prices on the practice’s website.

The change took effect April 1.

I’d sure like to see more of this.

GettingUScovered

Due to changes made by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), we regret to announce that, effective midnight on June 30, 2013, Colorado’s federal high risk pool insurance program known as GettingUSCovered will terminate. HHS has indicated that current GettingUSCovered Members will be eligible to enroll in the federally-run Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) effective July 1, 2013. The federally-run PCIP plan currently operates in 23 states and Washington D.C.

 

Read the whole thing.

HHS: 18 states to drop PCIP programs | LifeHealthPro.

PCIP is the pre-existing condition insurance plan that is running out of money. The goal of the PCIP was to provide coverage to individuals who were not eligible due to pre-existing conditions until the Afforadable Care Act (Obamacare) plans start in January of 2014.

Earlier in the month, HHS sent out a letter detailing additional financial obligation that would fall to the states that were administering their own programs (in many states the Federal Government was running the entire program).So in response, most of the states are washing their hands of the program and handing it over to the Feds.

States and local nonprofits have been running PCIP programs in 27 states, and HHS has been providing PCIP coverage in the other states.

About 100,000 people now participate in the program nationwide.

Enrollment has been much lower than originally predicted, but PCIP managers say the enrollees’ claims have turned out to be far higher than expected. The original funding is running out, and Congress has refused to provide more cash.

To stretch the remaing funds…

HHS officials have said that they have been taking a number of painful measures, such as reducing PCIP provider reimbursement levels to just 100 percent of the Medicare rate and requiring enrollees to switch provider networks, to make PCIP funding last until the end of the year.

Yikes. And the “you can keep your doctor” mantra goes away in a budget crunch.

As you can see, the government knows nothing about running an insurance program or the concept of adverse selection and had no idea how to forecast what the PCIP risk pool was going to look like. At least with Obamacare, coverage is “required” although the young invincables may revolt which would lead to budget issues.