{"id":16559,"date":"2020-07-31T07:52:57","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T11:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/?p=16559"},"modified":"2020-07-31T07:52:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T11:52:57","slug":"dont-count-on-lower-premiums-despite-pandemic-driven-boon-for-insurers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/?p=16559","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Count on Lower Premiums Despite Pandemic-Driven Boon for Insurers"},"content":{"rendered":"

(By Bernard J. Wolfson for Kaiser Health News)<\/p>\n

When COVID-19 smacked the United States in March and April, health plans feared medical costs could skyrocket, jacking up premiums drastically in 2021, when millions of the newly unemployed might still be out of work.<\/p>\n

But something else happened: Non-COVID care collapsed as hospitals emptied beds and shut down operating rooms to prepare for an expected onslaught of patients sickened by the coronavirus, while fear of contracting it kept people away from ERs, doctors\u2019 offices and outpatient clinics. In many regions of the country, the onslaught did not come, and the billions of dollars lost by hospitals and physicians constituted huge savings for health plans, fattening their bottom lines.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean consumers will see lower premiums next year.\u00a0 Continue reading article here…<\/a><\/p>\n

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Notice:<\/strong> The link provided above connects readers to the full content of the posted article. The URL (internet address) for this link is valid on the posted date; medicarereport.org cannot guarantee the duration of the link\u2019s validity. Also, the opinions expressed in these postings are the viewpoints of the original source and are not explicitly endorsed by AMAC, Inc.; the AMAC Foundation, Inc.; or medicarereport.org<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(By Bernard J. Wolfson for Kaiser Health News) When COVID-19 smacked the United States in March and April, health plans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,42,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-health-issues","category-employer-healthcare","category-health-care-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16560,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16559\/revisions\/16560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicarereport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}