Health Insurance Premiums, Dissected

My health insurance just went up 15% which it did last year and the year before. I found this Washington Post article from October that tries to explain why, Health insurance premiums, dissected.

"Thanks to some new insurance rate filings, required by the health reform law, we’re starting to get some answers — but also a lot of familiar finger pointing over who is to blame for growing health insurance bills."

"Flip through the filings and you see that, on average, insurers attribute about 60 to 70 percent of any given insurance rate increase to the growing cost of delivering health care."

"But the hospitals say its not their fault: The cost of treating patients, as new and more complex medical options become available, necessarily pushes prices up. “There’s better technology that’s demanded by patients and physicians,” says Caroline Steinberg, vice president of trends analysis for the American Hospital Association."

"Where do the rest of the costs go? Most companies say that a smaller portion of their premium increase, usually hovering around 15 percent, will cover growing administrative expenses. This part of the premium is facing downward pressure from the health reform law, which bars insurers from spending more than 20 percent on anything that’s not medical treatment."

"As for profits, its a pretty mixed bag. I found a pretty even split between plans that expect to earn money next year, usually about 3 or 4 percent, and those who expect to take a loss."

I'm not sure I believe that there are all these new expensive treatments in each of the last few years that everyone is getting. As far as I know, new drug treatments have stalled and MRI's are still the big diagnostic equipment. I thought it was that as the population ages and becomes more obese we have more conditions to treat like diabetes and hypertension. That means we're spending on more treatments (and not spending on keeping people healthy by changing the farm bill and paying for gym memberships), but not that individual treatments are more expensive. But they are and I thought it was because hospitals and doctors amortize the costs of treating those that can't pay by raising rates on those that can. Also I know that ICU care is expensive and I'm pretty sure end-of-life care has stretched out to be much more than it was 20 years ago and I think that's raising general hospital costs too. Maybe I'm wrong.