This is a rush transcript from "Your World With Neil Cavuto," October 16, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: All right, well, he heads the companies insuring 100 million Americans. Today, he is sure of this. The Senate health care bills will hammer people with massive premium increases, and he has got the numbers to prove it, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association CEO Scott Serota.
Scott, good to have you.
SCOTT SEROTA, CEO, BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD ASSOCIATION: It`s good to be here, Neil. Thank you.
CAVUTO: You know insurer — the health insurers got attacked coming out with this pre-vote speech, the speech eve study that said premiums would go up, that you guys are getting worried, that you`re anxious.
What do you make of that?
SEROTA: Well, Neil, I would tell you that the Blue Cross Blue Shield system, we came out with our study on Wednesday, after the vote.
And our intent is to help educate people about the real impact of adding people to the system and putting the system out of balance. We support and have supported for a long time guaranteed issue, getting everybody covered, not — not differentiating based upon preexisting conditions or gender.
But we`re concerned that, if we do that without a way in which to bring everybody into the risk pool, the risk pool will get out of balance. And those that are in the risk pool will pay an extraordinarily high price for their coverage. And we want to educate people to be sure that we can avoid that.
(CROSSTALK)
CAVUTO: I understand.
I just want to make clear to folks that you are very big on — on kind of forcing, rather than easing up, the requirements if you`re going to go this health care reform route for young healthy people to sign up and pay into the system. Otherwise, they won`t or they will be less inclined to, and it will be a financial mess, right?
But they are just loosening those rules now. And Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican senator who pushed for this, might push some more in that direction, further hurting you, right?
SEROTA: Well, that has us concerned, because the young healthy people are the most price-sensitive shoppers, and we need to get those folks into the pool, so that we can maintain the balance, because if we don`t do that when we guarantee-issue and cover everybody, the first people to jump in the pool will be the sickest people.
And the resultant risk pool will be out of balance, and the premiums will go up. And they could up over a five-year period as much as 50 percent. And that is an affordability issue for every American.
For health care reform to be affordable, it has to be not only affordable at the national level with regard to the budget, but it has to be affordable for every consumer.
CAVUTO: All right, Scott, thank you very, very much. Busy news day. We appreciate your taking the time. All right.
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