Health insurers dangle guarantee as mandate bait.(Practice Trends)

As a new administration prepares to tackle health care reform, the health insurance industry is offering a few suggestions.

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), which represents about 1,300 companies covering more than 200 million Americans, says its members would be willing to guarantee coverage for individuals with preexisting medical conditions in exchange for a government mandate that all individuals purchase health insurance.

AHIP's board of directors issued the proposal after conducting a nationwide "listening tour" on health care during which many Americans raised concerns about the lack of coverage for preexisting conditions in the individual insurance market.

But to make guaranteed coverage a reality, the federal government will need to require that individuals purchase coverage and use mechanisms such as an insurance coverage verification system, an automatic enrollment process, and some type of enforcement, the group said.

When coverage is guaranteed and there is no mandate to have insurance, individuals tend not to purchase insurance until they get sick, which drives up costs, said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for AHIP For example, a study conducted on behalf of AHIP by Milkman Inc. found that in many states that implemented guarantee issue or community rating policies in the 1990s, there had been a rise in insurance premiums and a reduction in individual insurance enrollment. In ...