The Goat Pen

From the sublime to the ridiculous, I just got my letter from Blue Cross. Had been paying $170/month for my health insurance, they say that plan is no longer available. The comparable plan they are offering is $410/month. Dag...

Spacer says that isn't going to happen to the majority people, so take comfort in that

Well now I'm going to the Blue Cross website, I punched in my info (age, etc) and up popped about 6 plans that are less than what I'm paying now...

I ain't buying no damn insurance!

hedge wrote:Well now I'm going to the Blue Cross website, I punched in my info (age, etc) and up popped about 6 plans that are less than what I'm paying now...

same coverage?

Actually I just looked, those were plans for 2013, I have to wait until after Oct.1 to see what else I can get. I'm sure the feds will have that website up and running without a hitch on Oct. 1...

eCat wrote:Spacer says that isn't going to happen to the majority people, so take comfort in that

It's not, at least not based on the ACA. There is another trend though unrelated. There are a few companies that are creating private exchanges to bundle a single amount that a company will pay. These exchanges are unrelated to the ACA. Whether this spreads is based on the marketplace.

Winners: people who work for small businesses (less than 100, above 25)
100% of poverty rate to 133% of poverty rate
Anybody with a pre-existing condition
Anybody with a significant illness (no lifetime caps)
25 year olds with parents that have insurance

Losers: Those with high deductible low coverage insurances
Young people that don't want insurance and don't have insurance
Unions with cadillac plans
low wage jobs that can be downsized to part-time (but if the company then tries to make work overtime on a regular basis, that company will incur large penalty -see Walmart)
Insurance companies which now have to spend 80% of gross money on patients
Hospitals, particularly in states where the state declines to take the additional medicaid money
Tanning beds (10% tax)

"Losers: Those with high deductible low coverage insurances"

That's me. Although I was reading on the Exchange website something that sounded encouraging if you were self-employed...

hedge wrote:Actually I just looked, those were plans for 2013, I have to wait until after Oct.1 to see what else I can get. I'm sure the feds will have that website up and running without a hitch on Oct. 1...

so you had cheaper options last year?

hedge wrote:"Losers: Those with high deductible low coverage insurances"

That's me. Although I was reading on the Exchange website something that sounded encouraging if you were self-employed...

basically the losers are anyone that had premium insurance in 2013. I guess them paying the highest amounts of money for insurance wasn't enough

what do you mean by premium? Only cadillac plans will face the tax, not present n most plans. Mostly with some unions

Owlman wrote:what do you mean by premium? Only cadillac plans will face the tax, not present n most plans. Mostly with some unions

I know its not just me Spacer, there has to be a ton of people out there with good HMO plans that are totally getting fucked by this - and if I understand it correctly, if my company does offer me insurance, then even if there was a cheaper alternative on the exchange, I can't use it because I have options where I work.

So I've dutifully paid every year, facing cost increases that basically wiped out my raise in order to maintain premium HMO coverage that was supplemented by my company and now I will be getting less insurance, significantly higher premiums AND a major deductible - all due to cost increases from the ACA. And really , who gives a shit whether its on the up and up or not. I'm still going to pay more because of the ACA. There is no denying that.

So , IMO, our government is fucking over working families who had company provided healthcare. Its typical - Once our government gets involved, the middle class gets squeezed - and they don't care because now the kid working at Subway gets a tax subsidized $3000 deductible plan he'll never meet and they get to go on TV and talk about how great his life is now that a 22 year old has a high deductible health care plan.

The real question is - how many people are like me out there? There are about 112 million people in PPO and HMO's. I wonder how many are actually going to see this as cost neutral or actually see a decrease as promised?

Milliman starts by walking through all the factors that will make insurance more expensive in 2014. One has nothing to do with the health-care law at all: The firm expects premiums to rise 9 percent next year, due to rising health-care prices. This increase would be in line with the premium hikes seen in recent years.

"We assumed the average increase in premiums from 2013 to 2014, in the absence of the Affordable Care Act changes, to be 9.0 percent," the report says, noting that individual market premium hikes last year ranged between 7 and 11 percent.

The 9 percent increase would happen regardless of Obamacare, so it's hard to count those as a result of the law. There is, however, one part of the health law that will be expensive: The requirement that insurance companies cover a whole bunch of health benefits. This is known as the "essential health benefits" and it can include some health services that plans previously skimped on. Californians (and the rest of the country, for that matter) will have to pay more to get more coverage, essentially. Milliman estimates this will increase premiums by 22.2 percent for most Californians.

So we have health care costs and quality of coverage going up, which are components that would raise premium rates for everyone. But there's one other change, the influx of new customers, that could either raise or lower your premiums, depending on whether you already have coverage.

For those who already have insurance, the Affordable Care Act is expected to increase premiums by 14 percent. That makes sense when you think about some of the people likely to enter the market: Those who previously found coverage too expensive to buy a health plan, perhaps due to a health condition.

If you're one of those uninsured Californians, by the way, the Affordable Care will actually lower the cost of insurance (compared to life without Obamacare) by 14 percent.

Those are the elements that will increase the cost of health insurance, but it's important to remember that there's another big part of the law meant to reduce premiums. These are the tax subsidies, available to Americans earning less than 400 percent of the poverty line (about $45,000 for an individual). These, Milliman expects, will make insurance 83 percent less expensive for someone earning less than 250 percent of the poverty line.

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and there is no shortage of examples where people wish they saw a 14% increase as opposed to 100 or 150% on their current policies.

if my company does offer me insurance, then even if there was a cheaper alternative on the exchange, I can't use it because I have options where I work.

That's true. There are 305 million people in the United States. There were approx. 45 million people uncovered. The ACA was designed to effect some 35 million. Most of these were in their own small business or worked for small businesses. Half of those 35 million are within 133% of the poverty line and were added to medicaid but with greater payment percentages from the feds. The rest were to have access to insurance either through subsidies to their small business employers or through access to the exchanges.

Major manufacturers who already have insurance do not have access to exchanges. As you note, the ACA doesn't really put enough downward pressure on insurance costs. But it does something the President absolutely personally hated, causing sick people who reach their limits to lose their insurance. The President had to watch his mother fight with insurance companies while she had cancer.

The problem is that health insurance cost have been rising much faster than inflation (as high as 12 to 18% per year) for the past several years. No real change for most people, but that no real change still includes higher insurance costs each year.

As for California? I saw another evaluation where their costs would be lower because they already had rules requiring a certain minimum coverage. Therefore, the impact of the companies that weren't providing adequate coverage wouldn't affect Californians as much.

Which is the case, we'll find out.

hedge wrote:From the sublime to the ridiculous, I just got my letter from Blue Cross. Had been paying $170/month for my health insurance, they say that plan is no longer available. The comparable plan they are offering is $410/month. Dag...

The only way I could afford my insurance with the AFA is to switch to a catestrophic plan ($5000 deductable) straight insurance to protect my family and our assets from medical bankruptcy.

That's it. That's all I've got now.

" The ACA was designed to effect some 35 million."

They failed

No, that's about right.

"and there is no shortage of examples where people wish they saw a 14% increase as opposed to 100 or 150% on their current policies."

That's me, evidently. It's a hard pill to swallow for me, b/c I'm just looking for something to give me enough time to figure out how to kill myself if I get cancer or some shit, or so that I can get reasonably good care if I'm in a bad car wreck. I just don't go to the doctor if I've got a cold or flu or hangover or any shit like that. And if my back pain does flair up or I get an infection or break my arm, I can pay for that out of pocket. So even the $170/month I was paying chaffed me a little bit, although when I listen to the rest of you jag-offs talking about how much you pay, I figure it wasn't so bad. But now I've got to pay $410 for the same fucking thing (which is basically nothing, unless I get the cancer)? Funny how the free market insurance business was happy to sell me that same policy for less than half of what they're saying I've got to pay now...