Affordability

Health insurance premiums over the past ten to twenty years have been rising consistently. Living expenses in general have been on a steady up swing for about the past ten years. Heating expenses, water and sewage, telephones, paid television services, groceries at your local supermarket, electrical utilities and especially gas. The rise has been absolutely phenomenal and yet employers are having a difficult time in raising the pay scales for their employees. Along with this is the ever-growing problem of affordability for goods and necessary services. The increasing rise in health insurance coverage and expense for the self-employed individual has now grown out of hand. The Governor of New York is attempting to oversee and hopefully correct this problem through legislation before the state house. The Governor is trying to find a workable plan to improve the status of affordable health care for all participants within the Greater New York area, including those who are self employed. If this particular legislation is approved all participating health insurers in New York would not be able to raise their rates arbitrarily. Surely, this will go into some type of arbitration because the multitudes of insurers functioning in New York are not pleased. In this new approach, it is important for residents to procure accessibility to the various carriers that conduct business.  One of the changes will be for insurance carriers to gain approval from the State first, through request submissions, before they will be able to consider raising the premiums at will. The new overseer of this project will probably be designated to the Superintendent’s office for further review. Along the lines of self-regulation, this has not been a successful project in the past. Now is definitely the appropriate time to research an innovative approach. In this way those participants who are self employed will be able to ascertain the best New York insurance policy at a competitive price. This would be a winning solution to aid in keeping the ever-rising costs down and the type of coverage high. Health insurance coverage in New York at the current time is at an all time high and any effort to assist in reducing the cost would be a step in the right direction. Many plans are just so inaccessible to those involved in the self-employed system and the changes being recommended would once again put them within reach. In the mean time, the clock is running out for the self-employed to locate and keep affordable insurance coverage whether it is just for the person or for a family run business.