Georgians deserve easier access to health insurance plans outside of their employer and across state lines.

In order to protect the interests of the people of Georgia, the insurance market must be truly free.

You have a choice in car, home, and life insurance, but your health insurance is often limited to what your employer can provide. This is because your employer can bargain for better rates by signing a contract and then use your money to pay for insurance as a pre-tax expense.

Consumers should be able to join co-ops or similar groups in order to negotiate for better rates OUTSIDE of their employer.

What is important to your neighbor may not be important to you.

Perhaps your neighbor doesn’t mind paying a premium to cover costs of substance abuse, mental health, reproductive services or prevention.

Perhaps your neighbor would like to reward companies that invest in technology, drug development, and increasing efficiency for their healthcare providers.

Should your neighbor make those choices for you? Should you make those choices for your neighbor? What about your employer? What about your coworkers?

I want every Georgian to be able to make those choices for their own household AS LONG AS NO ONE ELSE IS COERCED, FORCED, OR HARMED.

Does your health insurance cost more this year than last?

Has it EVER gone down in price?

Is your coverage better or worse than it used to be?

Inflation has unfortunately affected every aspect of American life, but insurance costs seem to increase no matter who’s in charge of the economy. This is partly because of our aging populace and more expensive drugs and treatments.

However, limitations on the number of companies allowed to work in a particular state and disallowing customers from shopping or collective bargaining allows insurance companies to just keep increasing their prices and their profits.

I have no ethical problem with a company making lots and lots of money. . . unless that company is protected from competition or from compliance.

Companies that mistreat their policy holders or the entities with whom they contract deserve to be out-competed in a free market.

You signed up for the insurance plan your employer offered. You faithfully pay your premium every month, perhaps it’s deducted from your check before you ever see the money. You were told that ObamaCare required that everything important to you would be covered.

But then you found out that you couldn’t see your doctor anymore because they’re out of network. Or you can’t go to that specialist, because they’re out of network. Or you can’t have the only drug that helps your condition, because it’s not on formulary. Or you can’t get your prescription from the pharmacy on Main Street because have to buy the it from the insurance company itself.

These practices are touted as “cost saving measures” but they’re really just ways to maximize profits at your expense, making you jump through hoops to delay or deny the healthcare you expected.

Insurers who abuse their customers in these ways must be held accountable. It is the duty of the Insurance Commissioner to enforce contracts and revoke licenses if necessary for continued abuses.

On the doctor side of the relationship, insurers offer us a contract to be in network with them. As such, the insurer directs their customers to use in-network providers and discourages them from shopping outside the network. The contract may stipulate that we are paid a percentage (perhaps 150%) of Medicare rates for a particular service.

Sometimes it’s worth contracting with an insurer, sometimes it isn’t.

But what if the insurer doesn’t pay?

Let’s imagine I provide a service for you and it costs $100. We bill your insurance company $100 and they pay me $50 instead. Federal law prevents me from coming to you and asking for the balance.

So what do I do? The same federal law that prevents me from asking you for money allows me to go to an arbitrator to determine who is right and who owes who money.

If the arbitrator says the insurer owes me the full $100, they're supposed to pay the balance plus the administrative costs of the arbitration.

But they don’t.

Now what?

Now I have to pay a bill collector to go to the insurance company to demand that they pay the money I was owed in the first place.

Insurers who continue to require arbitration and who flaunt the provisions of the No Surprises Act should not be allowed to do business in the State of Georgia.