Quinn Health Insurance - Health Insurance

Regulator says he had to act swiftly Irish Times

30.03.10

CIARÁN HANCOCK and EITHNE DONNELLAN

REACTION:  FINANCIAL REGULATOR Matthew Elderfield last night defended the decision to move “swiftly” to put Quinn Insurance into provisional administration.

“Last Wednesday, we received significant news that showed that the financial position of the company was overstated by about €450 million,” he said, speaking at a press conference on the new level of reserves to be required of Ireland’s troubled banking sector.

“In light of this information, we acted swiftly and asked that the company be put into administration. We believe that is in the best interests of policyholders to do that.”

Mr Elderfield said the regulator had, for months, “been having increasingly serious concerns about the financial position of Quinn Insurance, and we’ve been pressing very hard for a capital injection into the company”.

He said he was hopeful a solution could be found for the company “going forward”.

Source:

Public v. Corps in National Health Care Debate

cartoon by Bill Jarcho

As the U.S. Congress works on a national health care bill, people have lined-up behind three main proposals. The one most favored by citizens and doctors — and many Democratic lawmakers — is the single-payer system, which would improve and extend Medicare to all persons.x1 With this system everyone chooses one’s own doctors, and no one has to shop for health insurance. This type of system has been proven to work well in many other developed countries.x2 But both Congressional committees working on the national health care bill have taken single-payer off the table, saying that moving to it from today’s huge for-profit insurance system would be “disruptive”.x3 The second proposal, favored by much of the national Democratic leadership, is the public option, where a person would pick one from a menu of several insurance company plans and a non-profit government insurance plan.x5 Like single-payer, the public option would be free of the huge costs in marketing, executive pay and profits of insurance company plans. But, to keep the public option viable, lawmakers would have to tool the system to guard against insurance companies cherry-picking the healthiest persons. To get the public option passed, proponents might have to deal with renegade Democrats sympathetic to insurance company gripes of not being able to compete.x6 The third proposal, favored by insurance companies, and those Republican lawmakers who favor any proposal at all, keeps an all-private insurance system, which would have some new regulation while requiring all persons to buy insurance.x7 This type of system was adopted three years ago in Massachusetts, but has failed to control costs and provide health care to all.x8 Still, the millions of dollars the insurance business has put into lobbying and lawmakers’ campaign chests might sway Congress to choose this system.x9 So, while it appears that corporate pull has yanked single-payer off the table, it remains to be seen if the people have enough pull in Congress to at least get a viable public option.

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