Mandate-Light Coverage

Sacramento and Washington D.C. are full of lobbyists whose job it is to represent the industry who is paying their salary. You can imagine how important it is for certain industries like Chiropractic, Acupuncture, Alcoholism and Drug Addiction, Mental parity and others to get mandates that health insurance must cover their particular area. Over the years the lobbyists have been successful and these mandates increase the cost of insurance. Most people simply want coverage for illness and accident. So these mandates are coverage they do not need. Cal-Basic would be a “mandate light” individual health insurance plan that would be available to people who lost their jobs in addition to COBRA. The insurers are fine with this concept. The premiums would be much lower for the laid-off employee while they looked for another job.

Cal Basic would be available on the open market as the lowest level plan an insurer could sell. Insurers have already done the actuarial analysis on this type of program. It would cost about $60 to 75 dollars per month for someone under age 30. The guaranteed issue rate for the age group under age 30 would be about $544 per month.

A plan like this would lower the ranks of the uninsured by lowering the cost of purchasing catastrophic insurance and open markets for consumers with pre-existing conditions.

The Health Insurance Guy