Sunday, March 15, 2009

Unintended Consequences

The government gave the banks large amounts of money to encourage lending and spur the economy. The large influx of funds, though, decreased the banks' need for deposits and thus, lowered the interest rates offered to the general public normally used to encourage increased deposits. Now, with the lower interest rates, the general public's funds are no longer generating interest - their money is not making them money. So, with this loss of income, people are being more careful about spending money. . . It makes me wonder how this was intended to work and where it went wrong.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Health Insurance Coverage

A news report recently stated that a great majority of uninsured adults are under 30 years of age. Wouldn't a large segment of this issue be resolved if the allowance for children to stay under their parents' health plan was expanded beyond the time in school? It seems that if we allowed children to be included under the parents' plan until they were able to secure their own health insurance, the solution would be simple. Why is health insurance eligibility tied to the IRS definition of dependent? Where is the correlation? Couldn't it be easily changed to have eligibility defined as (for example) -
in the last twelve years has been claimed as a dependent in at least two years consecutively - or, a natural, adopted, or stepchild covered under your health plan prior to reaching the age 18 and has not married, reached the age 30, and/or is not eligible under another group plan.

Or perhaps, we could encourage greater scope of school health insurance with an affiliate relationship offered to alumni.
I just wonder why it seems that national programs need to be developed without first just considering a simple solution within the system.