The Charlotte Observer
June 5, 2003
Blue Cross last-resort coverage reaches few
By Emery P. Dalesio
While North Carolina’s largest health insurer technically remains its insurer of last resort, it covers only 82 of 29,000 North Carolinians estimated to be otherwise medically uninsurable, a new report says.
The analysts, working for the state Insurance Department, reserved some of their sharpest criticism for the company’s track record with a program meant to cover those with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other expensive and debilitating conditions.
Blue Cross has been North Carolina’s insurer of last resort for most of its history, though state law doesn’t require it to shoulder that responsibility. Blue Cross entered into an unwritten promise in 1991 to offer a last-resort policy to stave off legislative efforts to create a high-risk health insurance pool, a move the nonprofit then feared would endanger its tax breaks, the report said.
Blue Cross “is not currently honoring the spirit of the agreement or understanding that was originally reached in 1990-’91,” the report said.
Most states have created high-risk health insurance pools, funded with taxpayer money or tax-deductible assessments on insurers, to pay the medical bills of people profit-seeking insurers won’t touch.
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/business/6016760.htm
Comment: Creating separate high-risk pools is utter nonsense. Not only have the state programs failed to function adequately, they also defeat the purpose of risk pooling. The high costs of the few need to be diluted in the pool covering the low costs of the many. The risk pool that makes the most sense is the pool that includes everyone. Short of that, private health plans will always devise methods of avoiding adequate coverage for those who need it the most.
Instead, we need to establish our own universal, public pool. Then we’ll all have access to decent health care.