Will health reforms create significantly cheaper insurance plans comparable to present insurance plans of the same quality?

I doubt if this reform will create reduced cost plans. While, in theory, when everyone is covered, cost shifting will decrease, and providers will charge less to insured patients, and then insurance companies will have to pass the saving onto the insured. A lot of steps.

The only one that seems assured is the last one, since insurers loss rations will be limited by law. So costs should go down for employers who are purchasing for large groups of employees, and, indeed, employers who have already been insuring their employees.

Will employers pass those savings on to employees? Hard to say. They might reduce the coinsurance, or expand covered benefits or they might raise salaries, or they might keep the extra money as profit.

I am skeptical that the HIEs will result in more competitive or low-cost plans. At least, not in the long run. I think that, at first, the insurance companies will be competing hard for all those new policy holders. But then they’ll get hit by excess medical spending, and they’ll drop out of the HIE, and insurance plans will go up a lot. That will be a huge problem for the legislation, since it will essentially act as a huge tax increase.

If the Republicans are in power then, they’ll scuttle the plan. If the Dems are in power, they might introduce a public plan, or even take the big leap and go to single payer, but I doubt it. Single payer is the only way to make sure that insurance costs decrease.

Not likely.