Independence Blue Cross Revenue’s Continue to Rise Because of Direct Government Payments

The Pennsylvania health insurance market continues to build its coffers but the growing income is not coming from the private sector.  Independence Blue Cross recently announced spectacular revenue increases.  In the past five years IBC has seen its income grow by 70%.

Most of this income has come from the corporatist arrangement that allows the federally created, funded, and once managed Medicaid and Medicare programs to use a private corporate middleman to do the same thing the federal government did but less efficiently.  Covid measures that expanded coverage by millions played a big part in the recent swelling of IBC’s coffers.

Other modest revenue growth has come from Obamacare policies that are essential bankruptcy protections. People using this type of coverage pay the international going rate for their care at the point of service and pay monthly premiums that also exceed international norms. However, if they have a catastrophic accident, the policy puts a cap on their out-of-pocket costs, which may protect them from needing to declare bankruptcy.

Personal bankruptcy in the US has been consistently fueled by out-of-pocket healthcare expenses. Two-thirds of bankruptcy cases are due to medical expenses.