And no, I am not being sarcastic.
Not
One
Bit.
At Josh Marshall's online news operation, he has been soliciting people for PPACA (Obamacare) stories, and someone just sent in something that implies that the way that this is set up is nothing short of genius, both in terms of policy, and politics.
Basically it goes as follows:
- Because of state regulatory issues, insurance companies have an incentive to overprice their policies, because they are serving a new (broader) market, and because the state rate setting bureaucracy is slow and cumbersome.
- If this is true, then the 80% medical loss ratio requirements will mean that they have to issue refunds to people at the end of the year.
So, this means that it is pretty likely that a lot of people will be getting refunds in early 2015.
Looking at this through my political lens, it looks pretty good.
News about lots of people being eligible for refunds should start percolating up sometime toward the end of the 3rd quarter of 2014.
That is September and October of 2014.
Just before congressional elections.