"Jumpers and Dumpers" in MA

I have noted in past blogs about how the experience of health care reform in Massachusetts could be a great predictor of how health care reform will play out nationally. Well a report commissioned by the MA Dep't of Insurance is not encouraging. From the Boston Herald:

The report found that as the number of individual subscribers grew from 45,900 in 2006 to 107,343 in 2008, the percentage of individuals terminating coverage within their first year also grew, from 13.8 percent in 2006 to 24.2 percent in 2008.

But overall, the state consultants at Oliver Wyman said the trend only increased insurers’ costs by less than 1.5 percent each year.

Insurers don’t necessarily agree.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts executive Andrew Dreyfuss attributed the insurer’s recent losses to the trend.

“It’s not the way insurance is supposed to work,” he told the Herald this week.

With the penalty for not purchasing mandatory coverage so minimal, I can see individuals doing what is happening in Massachusetts nationally come 2014.