Where are insurance premiums in Arkansas headed? Here's a rough estimate: up, up and away into the fiscal stratosphere, if not higher. This state's insurance commissioner, Allen Kerr, now has approved double-digit raises for the various insurers that participate in state government's insurance exchange beginning next year:
• Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which was already increasing the costs of its premiums for next year by 7.8 percent, is now to raise them by 14.2 percent for the more than 200,000 people it insures in this state. Ouch!
• Centene, which operates out of St. Louis, had already been set to raise the rates paid by its more than 93,000 subscribers in this state now plans to raise them by 21.4 percent. Ouch! again.
• Arkansas' own Qual-Choice Health Insurance company, which is based in Little Rock, was going to raise its rates by 9 percent but now can up them by a whopping 25 percent. Ouches galore!
Tell us again that there's not all that much to worry about if we'll just keep chipping away at this mountain of a problem. Which is what this state's outwardly calm governor, the Hon. Asa Hutchinson, regularly does. But his soothing statements can't hide his concerns. For a worried man sings a worried song no matter how hard he tries to hide the quiver in his voice.
Just the other Friday, the Guv assured Arkansans that he was working with various state agencies and corporate insurers "to minimize the impact of this change on private insurance consumers." He sounds more than a little like a man standing between two 18-wheelers as they head directly for each other. But have no fear: It shouldn't be long before he and other political specialists find somebody else, anybody else, to blame for this heckuva fix in which the state finds itself.
The candidates for scapegoat are numerous--from the always blameable Donald J. Trump to the already squeezed-tight insurance carriers themselves. Yes, by all means let's blame everybody but ourselves for having swallowed this sucker bait in the first place.
Arkansas' governor isn't the only one who sounds worried about current trends in insurance rates despite his claim that Arkansas Works, which is the name his administration gave his insurance program once upon a better time. To quote Marquita Little, who directs policy for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families: "I just have huge questions about the future of the program." This state now pays 5 percent of the program's considerable cost but is to pay 6 percent of it starting next year. And the cost the year after that is anybody's guess. Let's just say projections are less than assuring. This is what comes of substituting a slick PR ploy for a realistic program.
Joe Thompson, who directs the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement after a distinguished career as a responsible state official, sounds concerned, too. He has this to say about the state's whole approach to this ever more troubled program: "If it increases the cost on Arkansas Works, it raises the question of cost-effectiveness, and I think it also threatens the level of political support necessary to continue the program in the fiscal session" of the Legislature next year. At the moment, the state's policy might be summed up as watchful worrying no matter how official spokespersons try to sugarcoat it.
It's been said that you can't cheat an honest man. But it's easy enough to mislead a self-deluded one. And the first stages of the hangover that now follows every binge is already being felt. So fasten your seat belts, insurance buyers. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
Editorial on 10/18/2017