Health Insurance at Less Than $2 Per Day

A 30-year-old nonsmoker can buy health insurance for $54 dollars per month, on average, in Long Beach, CA, on the individual-plan market. The price is $56 in Sacramento, and $58.77 in Tucson. For residents of these cities, that’s less than two dollars per day. At the other end of the spectrum are New York City and Boston, where individual plans cost, on average, $334.09 and $267.57, respectively. Yes, that’s right: an individual plan in New York costs over 6 times more than in Long Beach, CA.

These numbers come from a new survey from health insurance clearinghouse eHealthInsurance, “The Most Affordable Cities for Individuals to Buy Health Insurance” (PDF link). The survey looks at the cost of high-deductible (but still less than $1,000) plans available on the individual market in the country’s largest 50 cities. Long Beach, Sacramento, and Tucson are all in the top ten for affordability. New York and Boston are at the very bottom of the list.

The survey’s most interesting finding concerns affordability: in 33 of the 50 cities, individual policies can be had for premiums of less than $100 per month, on average. Health insurance is much more affordable than most people realize, especially with the growing popularity of high-deductible HSA-joined plans.

How is it, though, that the prices for these plans vary so much by geographical region? Are the citizens of New York really 6 times more expensive to insure than those of Long Beach? While several factors are at play, the dominant one is regulation. Health care regulation and insurance mandates vary significantly by state; when states require that plans must include certain services (e.g., dental care, eye care, screenings, etc.), prices rise and insurance becomes less affordable. As the report points out, Boston and New York are the only cities on the list with several particularly onerous and expensive regulations on the books.

The survey points the way to a common-sense approach to reduce the number of the uninsured. First, and obviously, states should back away from mandates and regulations that increase the cost of insurance. As well intended as they surely are, these policies put insurance out of the reach of many low-income workers and families. Second, the survey supports the use of tax credits to make health insurance even more affordable for those who are today uninsured. The President has proposed tax credits for health insurance of $1,000 for individuals and up to $3,000 for families. In even moderate-regulation states, this could drop the cost of a year’s coverage to a level that most low-income workers could afford.

Source

***************************

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here, the mirror site may be more up to date. My Home Page is here or here.

***************************