by
Brian Mann on September 21st, 2010
The fun just keeps coming for North Country counties, struggling with declining state revenues and increased demand for their services.
Now, Essex County supervisors have been told by their insurance company that they face a massive hike in their insurance premiums, according to Lohr McKinstry’s article in the Plattsburgh Press-Republican.
The reason for the increase is an extraordinary number of claims, seven of which exceeded $100,000, said consultant Mark Crawford of Burnham Financial.
He said the county had $6.1 million in claims but paid only $5.5 million in premiums this year for medical coverage.
Lohr’s article doesn’t detail why there were so many claims, but it does lay out the array of other spiraling costs that the county faces. Read all about it here.
Tags: adirondacks
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Universal single payer health care is looking better all the time.
Indeed, knuckle……I can’t but wonder how long the insurance industry and big pharm thinks it can continue to raise premiums and costs on governments, businesses, individuals, etc. before the entire house of cards collapses. It seems at some point it’s all going to implode.
Isn’t this s perfect example of what the future holds? The choice will be raise taxes 46% or 80 or 100% or just let Obama care handle it. Push them off onto the Federal Gov’t and………..wait, with all those people prices can’t drop, they’ll go up!
Yeah, this is going to end well.
Or we can lower health care costs by using more science-based treatments (or as the ‘fiscal conservatives’ like to say death panels). The most expensive treatment is not always the most effective treatment. Is angioplasty the best treatment for a blocked coronary artery? The most expensive drug is often no more effective than a generic equivalent. Are cheap diuretics as effective in controlling blood pressure as newer beta blockers or calcium channel blockers?
But will you work on tort reform so that doctors aren’t more concerned with covering their butts than actually curing the problem? Will we look into fraud more and abuse of the system? Are those $100K claims the result of a major medical issue or is half or 2/3’s of it butt covering or abuse by the patient or medical staff?
Well we have health care reform now, so why is this so expensive? What will the health care reform bill passed this year do about the above problem?
Tort reform is a conservative straw man – they don’t like trial lawyers. Besides, the highest estimate I’ve seen is that it would reduce costs by 2% tops. Personally, I want my day in court if my surgeon removes the wrong leg or operates on the wrong knee. There are some mistakes that are inexcusable. I’d have no problem if part of the reform would be to have professional juries that know something about medicine. What we really need is to revoke licenses of physicians that consistently make mistakes.