The news might be bleak for Wall Street, but news of a proposed $700 billion bailout of the nation’s financial system might give health insurers a break.

A recent Bloomberg News article published in the Salt Lake Tribune posits the notion that taking a gigantic chunk of money from the fed budget to salvage the financial markets from their losses due to the mortgage crisis, will leave little for proposed changes in the nation’s health care system, which, depending on how one views it, could be good news for some large health insurance carriers.

I am not a fan of federal oversight of insurance; I am not a fan of federal oversight of just about anything.

Sure, when public safety is an issue — such as requiring inspections to avoid tainted foods or regulations that dictate how many hours a plane can fly before it is serviced — well, that is a no-brainer.

But having the government get involved in health insurance (it hasn’t worked so well in places such as Canada and England) isn’t necessarily a good idea. No one can say with a straight face that the IRS or the Social Security Administration are efficient, well-run operations. And heaven forbid we mention the rampant fraud associated with Medicare and Medicaid.

However, the tide will likely shift after the near collapse — and subsequent government bailout — of the world’s largest insurance carrier, AIG. Read the rest of this entry »

The most vocal — and possibly most unlikely -– critic of the proposed merger between Highmark Inc. and Independence Blue Cross in Pennsylvania has resigned abruptly, according to an IFAwebnews.com article. Neither now former CEO Anita M. Smith nor officials at Capital BlueCross, the Harrisburg, Pa.-based health insurer in Central Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley, would offer an explanation for her departure.

The timing, in the heat of the debate over the merging of Highmark and IBC, seems more than a coincidence. Since we don’t have the real reason or reasons for Smith cleaning out her office, I’m left to speculate. I have three-and-a-half theories.

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The stock market had been open for just seven minutes Monday before the first call for federal regulation of insurance was made on CNBC.

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Without question, a recent opinion piece by Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek is THE most definitive I have ever read about universal health care.

Enough said. Just read it already.

Homeowners in Texas and the surrounding areas may unwittingly enter the fray over who is responsible for damage to their homes due to flooding: private carriers or the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

Of course, this assumes that homeowners actually have either one.

A recent Houston Chronicle article begins with the topic of high deductibles for homeowners who suffered damage, then opens up the can of worms about responsibility for flood damage caused by ordinary flood sources and special occurrences such as a “storm surge.”

Many insurers who might face flood insurance claims from homeowners claim they are not responsible, if the insured’s policy does not cover flood damage. No doubt, however, that there will be state or federal mitigation if disagreements arise.

Two interesting takes recently on the subject of increased government intervention into health insurance…

In California, lawmakers passed a law that requires health insurance carriers to spend a portion of premium dollars on patient care, resulting in a drop in the share prices of some of the nation’s largest health insurers, according to an article on Forbes.com.

In another turn, Republicans announced that the party is rejecting a push by some to inject the government more into the healthcare and health insurance industry.

On the one hand, we have a government move that hurts companies and the investment that many Americans make in those firms, and on the other hand we have a group that wants to limit how much the government should dip its hand into private business.

Whew! I don’t need to explain that it’s the collective sound coming from the insurance industry in the smaller-than-expected wake of Hurricane Gustav. (Okay, I just did.)

The three-day Labor Day weekend was hardly that for insurance company executives and the millions of people displaced from their homes by what New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called “the mother of all storms.” Though his intentions - to get people out of harm’s way this time - were good, Hurricane Gustav didn’t cooperate. Or did it. The once Category 4 hurricane (predicted to become a Category 5 storm, the worst) hit at a Category 2 level, landing about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans and sparing the levees much of the storm surge that could have made this storm one of the worst, if not the worst yet.

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