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White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups
dcblogs writes that the Obama Administration is urging tech entrepreneurs "to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and said having the coverage will give them the 'freedom and security' to start their own businesses. 'There is strong evidence that when affordable healthcare isn't exclusively tied to employment, in more instances people choose to start their own companies,' wrote White House CTO Todd Park in a post to launch its #GeeksGetCovered campaign. Bruce Bachenheimer, a professor of management at Pace University and director of its Entrepreneurship Lab, said the effort is part of a broader appeal by the White House to get younger and healthier people to sign-up for Obamacare, and is in the same vein as President Obama's recent appearance on Between Two Ferns." Removing the tax structures that make companies by default intermediaries in the provision of health insurance, and allowing more interstate (and international) competition in health finance options would help on that front, too, aside from who's actually footing the insurance bill.
I was on my own with a full-time consultancy, but I scaled it back to off-hours and went back to a forty-hour-a-week corporate job for the health insurance. The cost of individual health care plans was insane, and the crappy ACA plans provide worse coverage with fewer providers - and they're even more expensive!
I really think what the feds are up to here is trying to kill off as many individual and small business operators as possible. After all, it's a lot easier to monitor and tax large corporate entities than it is to chase after a bunch of little ones.
"A study last year found that in many American counties, especially in the deep South, life expectancy is lower than in Algeria, Nicaragua or Bangladesh. The U.S. is the only developed country that does not guarantee health care to its citizens; even after the Affordable Care Act, millions of poor Americans will remain uninsured because governors, mainly Republicans, have refused to expand Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income Americans. Although the federal government will pay for the expansion, many governors cited cost, even though the expansion would actually save money. America is unique among developed countries in that tens of thousands of poor Americans die because they lack health insurance, even while we spend more than twice as much of our GDP on healthcare than the average for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a collection of rich world countries. The U.S. has an infant mortality rate that dwarfs comparable nations, as well as the highest teenage-pregnancy rate in the developed world, largely because of the politically-motivated unavailability of contraception in many areas." Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/po...
was on my own with a full-time consultancy, but I scaled it back to off-hours and went back to a forty-hour-a-week corporate job for the health insurance.
I call bullshit. You had a "full-time consultancy" but couldn't afford a few hundred bucks a month for health care? Right.
I don't respond to AC's.
I had (at the time) a high deductible plan, basically what used to be called "major medical", for needs if I got hit by a bus, etc.. The deductible was only about $1200.
I coupled that with a HSA (Health Savings Account) which unlike the FSA's are not use it or lose it, they roll over annually. I socked away about $3K pre-tax annually and out of that, I paid my routine med visits and drugs.
I really liked this, it only cost me about $240/mo for premiums. This is what would usually best server young people, which I'm not....I got this and was happy with it and I have pre-existing conditions.
I'm looking to go that route again, but man...I looked at the health sherpa site that shows what obamacare offers in my area, and deductibles on anything but near gold plans is over $3K?!?!?
I would end up on many plans paying about $3K a year in premiums AND $3K+ in deductibles before I started having any insurance kick in. WFT?
I looked at the GOLD plan with no deductible, and it is about $590/mo...but no deductible and 100% pay. Interesting range of choices, no?
Sadly, I think we're stuck with obamacare, and it won't be repealed, but it needs to seriously be altered. Why not remove so many of the minimums for the insurance coverage (as an older man, I don't really need prenatal coverage), and open up insurance competition to allow it to cross state lines. I mean, I can buy motorcycle insurance from a national company across lines, why can't I buy health ins across state lines?
I think we're good with disallowing the pre-existing conditions, but aside from that, I can't see much that helps me or most people at my level of IT income or stage of life that is good about ACA as it currently stands...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Here in Europe we get free healthcare and awesome welfare when we are unemployed. Many of my tech colleagues (and myself included) take advantage of this to create start-ups all the time. It's really easy to start a business when you don't have to worry about housing, feeding, or taking care of yourself. It always blows my mind how Americans think socialism isn't business friendly.
>> few hundred bucks a month for health care
You don't have a family with kids..who occasionally get sick and broken bones, do you?
$6K/year is about right for real health insurance. What you had previously was "junk insurance" - them paying for and covering the bare minimum. If you were diagnosed with leukemia, your HSA would have been wiped out in the first week and your insurance company would have dropped you as soon as it could legally get away with it. A course of leukemia is going to set them back a cool million bucks, so they'd do ANYTHING they could to retroactively decide you lied on your insurance application and they didn't have to do anything.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Spreading the government propaganda.
Get paid for that?
You know what would help startups?
LOWER TAXES, LESS REGULATION and a government doing its job by enforcing the laws equally between the little guy and the mega corp... rather than giving preferential treatment to whomever pays the most.
Like advertising for Obamacare.
Then push for an intelligent universal health care system, like the Commie Canucks have (instead of a hammer and sickle they put a moose and maple leaf on their flag). Getting employers out of health insurance is good for both large and small businesses, as well as people. About the only ones worse off are the insurance and drug companies.
BTW, despite the glorification of small business in the US, Europe actually has a larger percentage of its economy in small business. I'd be very surprised if that wasn't in part because health insurance isn't tied to employment.
There is strong evidence that when affordable healthcare isn't exclusively tied to employment, in more instances people choose to start their own companies
Worker gets laid off, loses employer-provided health plan. Worker can't find full-time employement; becomes consultant to pay bills; buys health insurance. Conclusion: buying health insurance motivates worker to become consultant!
Removing the tax structures that make companies by default intermediaries in the provision of health insurance, and allowing more interstate (and international) competition in health finance options would help on that front, too
Translation: if we can remove one of the incentives for companies to provide health care plans, then more people will be forced to buy private health insurance! Yay!
We'll provide you with health care through the ACA and you'll be able to start your own business!
Then after you realize that government regulations are so onerous that its really difficult to get a business started, you'll have to go back to working for a big company.
You need to call the GOP... I hear they're having real trouble finding ACA horror stories that don't turn out to be utter bullshit after thirty seconds of digging. Your story isn't utter bullshit like all the others, is it?
The American public can finally see, first-hand, just how incredibly expensive healthcare is in this country. It's incredibly easy to forget if you have a large company to help buffer the cost. Maybe, hopefully, if enough people get pissed/fed up/tired, we can talk about tackling the root causes instead of the symptoms.
A failed web site launch, failure to meet their initial sign-up goal, failure to meet their predicted sign-up goal, continual fudging of implementation dates for random portions of the ACA.
It's just like having Bush all over again.
Hopefully people have finally gotten the message and aren't handing over their money to private companies just because the government says you have to.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Most of the ACA plans include all kinds of shit for kids, which is why single young people don't want it, but for you it's actually a great deal, so as DogDude said, I call bullshit.
Yeah, how'd that work out for banking? Interstate competition was supposed to do things like drive down credit card interest rates.
Instead, almost every credit card in the US is issued out of Delaware or South Dakota. And interest rates are quite high. Why? Interstate competition also means competition between state legislatures for laws that are most favorable to banks.
So what would happen with interstate health insurance? Legislatures would compete for the most insurance company-friendly laws. Which would be the least consumer-friendly laws.
Minimums are needed because cross subsidisation is rather integral to having affordable healthcare for everyone. Meaning those who are in the stage of their life that don't need much medical care pay more, but those that do are able to afford it.
I definitely agree with the suggestion that you need to break the link between healthcare and employment. Because there's obviously a very strong link between unemployment and needing medical care. I love living in a country with universal healthcare funded by taxation. Sure it means that I end up paying a lot more than I otherwise would, but it provides a safety net for everyone - including me should I happen to get unlucky and end up sick and unemployed. People don't end up having to declare bankruptcy because of medical bills or go without life saving medical care. And everyone is able to access a reasonable standard of healthcare (and the wealthier are not restricted from getting gold plated service if they wish to pay for it). But hey I realise that for a lot of Americans that concept is just communism so it'll never happen
If it were intelligent, why is it that people come down to the US from Canada for healthcare.
Oh, that's right...that doesn't validate how you feel about things...so it doesn't exist.
In the U.S., if you're working independently, or even trying to, you're not eligible for unemployment.
There's a lot of push-back against people ``double-dipping'' by both drawing un-employment and working independently --- actually, it's considered fraud. I've always been somewhat offended by Judy Chicago having at least one of her ``workers'' working on the ``The Dinner Party'' while he was on unemployment (and she couldn't even see the need to have him teach others how to do what he was doing).
The big difference is the U.S. tax rate is about a quarter of the G.D.P., while in Europe it's over a third, but the number of government checks in the U.S. is going up as noted in a recent story.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I too could not afford it, it's not a "few hundred bucks!" I have a family of 4 total and it was going to cost me $1800 /month with a $5,000 - $10,000 deductible. I don't remember the exact deductible but I recall it being of $5K. It did not pay for doctor visits until I hit the deductible amount. Basically a High Indemnity plan for $1800.00 a month! I had just left a corp. so I signed up for COBRA which gave me a PPO for $1400.00 /month and a $800 deductible with $35 doctor visits. But COBRA is temporary, it expires.
The ACA plans are joke!
Just keep claiming that REAL stories like the ones posted are bullshit, because every time you do another wave of voters gets turned off by your savaging of real people just like them...
Not true, I know how to read for myself my policies. I had the same good coverage for an emergency that I have now on a W2 gig. The chief difference was that I just paid my own way for routine Dr. visits and meds.
Insurance is supposed to be there for EMERGENCIES, not to run you $10 copay for routine Dr. visits. That needs to be something you save and pay for, just like any other necessity of modern life, like utilities, food and gas.
This is the type of policy and situation that is usually perfect for healthy younger folks that don't need tons of coverage for routine things.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Because the crisis, by exposing the clubby and monopolistic nature of the current healthcare process, will cause its economic model to collapse. The feds will undoubtedly try to impose price controls, because this is the only way they know how to respond in such a situation. At that point, healthcare will FINALLY have to accept the more open-market approach that so many of us have suggested: prices "on the wall" for all procedures so the consumer can make open choices, freedom to shop around worldwide for better drug prices, freedom of entry to the field for technical specialists (nurse/practitioners, midwives, et. al.), and an end to artificially limited med school openings and artificial barriers to employment in the field when practitioners move to different states.
I'll be glad to see the old insurance companies go, too. How often have you had to go on a road trip with half the right number of pills because you have to wait until a certain calendar date to get a refill?
Is the day I'll sign up for my own insurance.
Right now, the market is so muddled I can't even tell from my non-functioning state website whether I qualify for subsidies or not, let alone be willing to put 1/6th of my paycheck towards health insurance that has such a huge deductible it will only pay if I get in a major accident.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Why would anyone think the Government could run healthcare? Is there any sign of competence or efficiency in Medicare, Medicade, or the VA? All are inefficient and fraud ridden with time wasted by reams of worthless paperwork. There is not one single thing that the Government of the US has ever done more efficiently than the private sector.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Keep in mind deductibles are not the same as they used to be.
The deductible you're talking about in your old plan would pay nothing until you reached the deductible.
The deductible in an ACA plan does not apply to a large number of routine procedures. Those are covered with a co-pay instead. For example, instead of paying full price for a check-up because you haven't hit the deductible, you pay around $10-40 depending on plan.
I'm skeptical of any anecdotes I hear about obamacare. On top of the fact that anecdotes aren't real evidence, there have been several well-publicized obamacare horror stories that have turned out to be far-right funded lies.
The other way is also true. The "strong evidence" that obamacare is going to make many more startups doesn't seem to be much more than a theory. Here's the study they're referring to. Seems odd that they don't show self-employment increasing in Massachusetts, given that Romneycare is basically Obamacare and happened there eight years ago.
And the policies of the current administration are a LARGE reason we're losing small business in the US.
We almost seem to be actively trying to make it impossible for US small businesses to succeed with ACA and too many regulations and endless paperwork and taxation.
A major drag on our economic recovery IS the lack of small businesses coming back to life in the US due to governmental oppression of them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The cost of individual health care plans was insane, and the crappy ACA plans provide worse coverage with fewer providers - and they're even more expensive!
I have exactly the opposite experience. I got a better plan for roughly the same cost and I had numerous to choose from. I also was able to get a Health Savings Account which is a great deal if you are eligible for one. My out of pocket maximum is around $4800 per year which I can easily manage if I have to. Most importantly my ability to get and keep health insurance is no longer tied to a specific employer which is LONG overdue. It should never be the case that losing your job should cause you to lose your health insurance. That's just morally wrong.
I really think what the feds are up to here is trying to kill off as many individual and small business operators as possible.
I run a small business (a manufacturing company) and the Affordable Care Act has been hugely helpful to us. Our employees were able to get similar coverage to what they had with our company plan, usually for less money out of pocket. Plus the company did not have to pick up any of the cost which saves our company roughly $10,000 per year. Basically we were paying roughly $550 per employee per month and the company picked up half the cost for an HMO. Now our employees are paying between $130-250/month out of pocket and the company doesn't have any of the cost.
Yeah, how'd that work out for banking?
Pretty well until government protection of giant banks along with imposition of regulations smaller banks could not keep up with, meant all of the smaller banks got bought up or shut down.
Meanwhile, instead of competition we have Obamacare mandating that very expensive insurance plans be bought from a handful of providers, reducing competition further.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>> but for you it's actually a great deal
Now there's the BS - you sound like the people who encourage everyone else to ride public transportation (without riding it themselves) right now.
Trust me - I did the math. ACA's benefits, including access to providers, were well below what I was getting with my expensive individual insurance policy a few years ago. With a couple of kids doing sports and the occasional illness, the difference between paying out of pocket for my own health insurance vs. snuggling back up to a megacorp (and dodging the self-employment tax) made it a no-brainer.
Before we continue, please tell me that you already signed up and paid for your ACA policy, and love what it does for you.
Have you ever tried to get healthcare in Canada? Have you tried to get your birth control prescription renewed that ran out 3 months ago because your doctor isn't seeing anyone and appointments are books out 4 or 5 months? Canada doesn't have a moose on its' flag moron.
Key difference is that your premiums would have been adjusted upwards or policy canceled whenever your health has deteriorated.
The vast majority of bankruptcies in America were related to medical bills as recently as last year, even with people who had insurance.
Depending on where you go, a "routine" doctor's visit can range from $50 to $200. Still, it's much cheaper for both you and an insurance company to cover a once a year "wellness" visit and catch anything early on than it is for you to skip the yearly visit since it costs an extra $50, and then suddenly learn you've had a slow growing tumor in your ear and now you're going deaf.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I'm in exactly the same situation. We had a group plan with Blue Cross / Blue Shield of Texas. We spent a good amount of time shopping for a plan that fit our needs well, with the right coverage and the right deductible for us. In the last two years the cost has nearly doubled. I left the business I'd had for 17 years and am now working for a government agency related to security.
Sadly, I think we're stuck with obamacare, and it won't be repealed, but it needs to seriously be altered. Why not remove so many of the minimums for the insurance coverage (as an older man, I don't really need prenatal coverage), and open up insurance competition to allow it to cross state lines. I mean, I can buy motorcycle insurance from a national company across lines, why can't I buy health ins across state lines?
Sadly, this has nothing to do with healthcare. It has everything to do with pumping money into the healthcare industry. Under the guise of Socialism. You have to pay for prenatal care for other people. That's the very DEFINITION of Socialism, take from those that have and give to those that want.
What!? you don't want to buy insurance for other people?! Greedy bastard to think that your concerns matter more than "the children"!
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Agreed.
I have friends in the medical industry (nurses, radiology techs) and they've all been going through several rounds of layoffs over the past 2 years and the remaining employees are being stretched thinner to cover increasing services because the hospitals can't cover the costs anymore because of the ACA.
Heck, in my state (and this is probably true of all of them) the insurance companies divvied up the markets like cable companies so certain insurance providers only cover certain hospitals in an area so they have practically defacto cable monopolies.
That's not good for anybody.
Since /. is all about armchair observation, here is mind on the whole thing: Giving businesses a tax break in the form of employee health insurance is a big huge problem. It warps the market and creates an unhealthy (pun!) situation.
Since /. also likes their car metaphors: Car insurance would be just as warped and loony if it turned out that the fed gave corporations big tax breaks for providing it for you. Instead of being a couple of hundreds of dollars for several months for an individual which could be paid out of pocket who knows how crazy expensive it would be because the car insurance industry would reorient themselves to having corporations as customers instead. Trivial things like oil changes and dent fixing become close to free when covered but thousands uninsured. And then you run into the problem of your employer having some justification in what you do with your car. "Are you driving too much? Maybe you should walk" and "Maybe you should take a different route too and from work" and "You should only buy these cars" and all sorts of pestering and intrusion. Would people tolerate it if they had this much interference with their vehicles but take it with their health?
Back to reality, this study has a point that for all of the faults in ACA there is a segment of the population that are stuck at their job because of their employer paid health insurance. They might have an idea and the skills to run their own business but can't start because entering the market solo is crazy expensive due to preexisting conditions or whatever. They are forced "sit tight" at their old job and have no alternatives. In this situation the ACA can provide cover and coverage to them but it is still the same old problem where the entrepreneur is providing health insurance for themselves because they are running a business and employing themselves instead of the true reason to use insurance as a hedge against disaster.
This does not seem to be the case for any of the plans I looked at. And even when I hit deductible, the insurance on most of these plans seem to only pay about 70% tops of the bills.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I have a hereditary liver illness, which gives has a median of 15 years to a liver transplant from the date of diagnosis (I'm 8 years in). I'm totally ineligible for any insurance, but my yearly costs are quite low, since there is no medication and really nothing that can be done about it. As a dual citizen, I left the US for my home country in Scandinavia, precisely because I wanted to start my own company, but couldn't do that in the US, because I could not get good insurance coverage.
Oh, I grew up in abroad and came to the US for a Ph.D. Got a NSF graduate student grant that cost the US around $250k. Great use of taxpayer money.
Who the fuck comes from Canada to the US for healthcare? That is the most pathetic Republican myth since Jesus Christ. You know the reality? Americans desperate for drugs ordering them from Canada!
No more utter bullshit than the planted ACA sunshine up your butt stories, like this article, talking about how great and liberating it is.
But I hear the DNC is having real trouble getting their propaganda over because the reality is people don't like it. Perhaps you need to call the DNC and tell them how it is?
The government doesn't set prices for procedures. The fed could extend the medicare pricing list to everyone instead of having to deal with each insurance company's "negotiated pricing" and arcane "most favored nation" contract rules. Or maybe employers could be required to offer up the cash that would have been spent on the company health plan so you can shop for yourself. Shopping for insurance across state lines would certainly be nice! Also, repealing state regulations that limit the size/capacity of hospitals.
My HSA should stay that way, if it's my money, no one should be able to take it but me! ...Actually, I wish my HSA could be grown and used as some kind of bond-like health insurance that also lowers my own premiums over time.
There are lots of political problems that could be fixed without repealing the ACA. 99% of it is removing greed, the #1 killer in America.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
I was with a start-up for a little over a year. One of the conditions I had for joining with them was that they would cover my COBRA expenses, because a) I couldn't afford it with my start-up salary and b) I couldn't get independent coverage because of a few preexisting conditions with me and my family. People forget about that clause. And lord help you if you are pregnant or have a pregnant wife (or want to get pregnant soon). Impossible to get coverage (or so I was told by two different brokers). Say what you want about Obamacare, but just the change of getting reasonably priced insurance even with preexisting conditions is enough for some people to have the freedom to jump into start-ups. Whether it's "right" or "wrong" is a completely different story.
When that happens in the US you try to fill the prescription anyway and the pharmacy calls the doctor's office to get a "pre-authorization" - usually within two days. They don't do that in pharmacies in Canada?
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I do symapthise with you guys over there in the USA.
We are lucky here in the UK to have a national health service provided by our government.
Private health cover is also available and I think that because the private health companies have to compete with the free NHS health service, this makes them all the more competetive- especially business packages.
Dan Midwinter
Director, Completely Care Ltd
http://www.completelycare.co.uk
I am sure you won't be swayed, but this is bullshit: "I mean, I can buy motorcycle insurance from a national company across lines, why can't I buy health ins across state lines?"
You can buy motorcycle insurance that conforms to your states laws as far as coverage they have to provide. Not the same thing as you are saying.
And then the argument would be that it would just be a race to the bottom where companies would just set up shop wherever the politicians were cheapest and they could maximize profits.
A few hundred? Try $800/month which is the cheapest plan the ACA offers where I live. And that plan was total garbage, didn't cover half of what you'd expect and had huge co-pays.
The problem with ACA is that it MANDATED HMO's... Not health insurance. Some people don't need an HMO... if you're running a moderately successful home business you're usually making enough money to cover your families medical expenses out of pocket. What you couldn't afford is catastrophic injuries like car accidents, cancer, heart attacks, etc... So you'd get a very limited policy for that. It wouldn't pay for prescriptions and such but if you started getting $200k hospital bills it would kick in. Those plans were pretty cheap... in the $200/range.
ACA made those kinds of plans illegal. Now you have to buy plans that cover all those things you didn't need... and they cost a fortune. If I tried to get the plan I have with my employer through the ACA exchange it would be over $1600/month. That's insane! And yes, I actually looked it up.
Ironically, one type of small business is flourishing because of all of this. My best friends father is an insurance salesman. When the ACA passed he was terrified... he'd go out of business. He's an older, cranky, eastern European man and hates democrats so that made it even worse. But when the reality finally dawned on him and everyone's insurance policies got canceled, he suddenly LOVES Obama. You see, he makes a commission on insurance sales. Because all of his clients now have to re-sign up for their insurance, he's basically making back all the money he already made off all of his clients the first time he signed them up.
This is exactly what I saw, and I'm just married without any kids. Huge monthly fees (not as high as yours though, remember I don't have kids), and ridiculously high deductibles. And I'm in a blue state. I went back to work in corporate America, but I'm a contractor so I don't get free healthcare.
Here in Europe we get free healthcare and awesome welfare when we are unemployed. Many of my tech colleagues (and myself included) take advantage of this to create start-ups all the time.
If that were true why are there a lot more start-ups in America than Europe?
So you had private insurance pre-obamacare? I am skeptical, but if so, you are lucky. What you don't realize is how unlikely it was that your insurance would have helped if something had seriously gone wrong.
Most pre-obamacare individual policies were the functional equivalent of the rock I keep in my pocket to ward off tigers. They made you feel good and may have actually helped with small emergencies, but they were useless when the serious issues that you thought you were covering actually came up.
Cheap storage VM.
Blame WW2 for that. Wage & Price Controls in WW2 made it impossible to compete for talent, so companies started offering free health insurance to sweeten their offers.
It worked, then. Alas, it became so embedded in our culture that getting rid of it is becoming nearly impossible.
I still think that the way to have gone for the ACA was to lower the age of eligibility of Medicare by five years per year, and make anyone under 26 eligible for Medicaid. That would take care of children through college, and phase out private health insurance in eight years.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
$240 a month is pretty close to $3k a year. Where you including your HSA payments?
Cheap storage VM.
I'm looking to go that route again, but man...I looked at the health sherpa site that shows what obamacare offers in my area, and deductibles on anything but near gold plans is over $3K?!?!?
I got a technically silver PPO plan (effectively gold if I stay in network with Blue Cross) that is compatible with an HSA. (HSAs are great) Cost to me is about $300/month and I get no subsidy. $4800 out of pocket max and $3K deductible. Everyone worries about the deductible but that isn't the important bit. The important bit is the out of pocket max. Health insurance isn't supposed to be to pay for your regular checkup. It's to keep you from going bankrupt if something serious happens.
I would end up on many plans paying about $3K a year in premiums AND $3K+ in deductibles before I started having any insurance kick in. WFT?
That's what an HSA is for. You put in $3K pretax and use that to pay the deductibles. Any plan compatible with an HSA has a minimum deductible of $1250/year. Only "high deductible" health insurance plans are compatible with HSAs.
Sadly, I think we're stuck with obamacare, and it won't be repealed, but it needs to seriously be altered
Sadly? I disagree. I think changes will (and should) be made in due time, but the basic goals it accomplishes are good ones. It removes the tie between employment and health insurance, it eliminates the pre-existing conditions problem and it prevents insurance companies from dropping you when you get sick. We can debate the details of how to deliver those things but the fact that they are possible now is a Good Thing.
I think we're good with disallowing the pre-existing conditions, but aside from that, I can't see much that helps me or most people at my level of IT income or stage of life that is good about ACA as it currently stands...
You are missing the other really important bit, namely that your insurance is no longer tied to your employer. No one should lose health insurance simply because they lost their job.
About 46k people came down from Canada to the U.S. to get health care in 2011. Quite a bit of that was paid for by the Canadian health care system, not out of pocket. That's pretty much in the noise. Statistics on how many people come down from the U.S. to get health care in Mexico because they can't afford to get it in the U.S. are harder to come by because people who do that generally pay out of pocket, but the number is comparable, and the reason is different: U.S. citizens going to Mexico are doing so because they can't afford health care in the U.S.; Canadians are taking advantage of excess capacity in the U.S. system to shorten waits, with the financial support of the Canadian national health insurance system. Despite sending a small number of Canadians south each year, Canadian health care is still hugely cheaper than American health care. Many U.S. citizens also go to Canada to purchase prescription drugs because they can't afford them in the U.S.
Point being, while what you said is true, it doesn't lead to the conclusion you are suggesting.
The absolute maximum yearly out of pocket allowed under the ACA is $6700 iirc. So your insurance company is required to cover 100% of any bills once you've hit that cap.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I would expect an small business owner to know the difference between net and gross. Healthcare had nothign to do with this. the gross costs are pretty much the same whether you're on your own, or your employer is footing the bill.
Basically it just tells me you weren't good enough to ask high enough rates for your own business to be able to pay for employer and employee contributions to you healthcare plan.
Why use anecdotes about people coming to the US for healthcare?
You can use the hard data.
In Canada, the life expectancy is 81.57 years.
In the US, the life expectancy is 78.62 years.
That's roughly the same. Canada does a bit better (by almost 3 years).
In Canada, the per capita healthcare costs are 4,522 (PPP), that's 17.7% of the GDP.
In the US, the per capita healthcare costs are 8,508 (PPP), that's 11.2% of the GDP.
That's not the same. Canada is far cheaper.
That's a quick overview, and Canada comes out better. If there were two health plans on the market, the "C" plan and the "U" plan, and the "U" plan was $4,260/yr*, while the "C" plan was $2,700/yr, and the life expectancy was better under the "C" plan, what would you choose?
In-depth studies seem to show a rough parity between outcomes in the US and Canada. You can argue the numbers (and there are areas where Canada is behind the US, as well as areas that the US is behind Canada), but as a general rule, the overall outcome between the two countries are the same. (And if you are interested in healthcare, looking at the disparities is interesting, both countries' healthcare systems have areas of failure.)
So - why would a Canadian come to the US for healthcare? I could think of several reasons. It could be to find a specific treatment center that has a better outcome for a disease, it could be for elective procedures, it could be because of a shorter wait time for non-critical procedures, it could be because of a procedure that isn't approved of in Canada but is approved of in the US, it could be a matter of geography (some parts of Canada are closer to US centers of population than Canadian centers of population), it could even be because of the effect that people perceive more value in service and goods when they pay more.
It's probably similar to the reasons why Americans go to other countries for healthcare. Except that there is one reason Americans go to other countries that Canadians do not: Cost.
* 17.7% of the median individual income in the US among the population > 18.
Not sure why I am bothering posting since you clearly won't be swayed by facts. But...
Just like yourself then?
What contraceptives can you get without a prescription?
Condoms retard, which anyone of any age can get at a 7-11.
Or also the morning after pill.
Now don't you feel like an idiot? No? Why not? If you don't feel any shame at this point, you are a real piece of work.
That's the very DEFINITION of Socialism, take from those that have and give to those that want.
Better drop that God-forsaken car and homeowner socialist tripe as well.
And keep in mind too that in addition to all costs increasing for everybody, you have simply gotten older. It costs a *lot* more to insure and fully cover an older population than a younger one (which is why, as another poster mentioned, the whole system falls apart unless the young subsidize the old to some extent). The vast majority of 20-somethings in a rich country like ours are very, very cheap to cover with insurance (though you still must have coverage because a simple car accident or appendectomy can bankrupt you). After the warranties run out, many 40-somethings and 50-somethings cost more than they pay in. Above that in age, costs skyrocket to an extent that would have citizens of most other rich countries in flat-out revolt.
The article rings true to me. Lack of portable health care at any non-outrageous cost was a huge part of my decision to stick with larger employers instead of pursuing entrepreneurial innovations. I look forward to seeing what the next generation comes up with, no longer living in a country where one health emergency leads to bankruptcy.
There are far more horror stories in the US than there are in Canada. My mom worked for Schneider National (the trucking company) and got to know a lot of Canadian drivers, not one of them would exchange their healthcare for the healthcare in the US. I'm sure there are horror stories in Canada but I personally haven't heard any and there doesn't seem to be evidence to support the theory that your average Joe that doesn't need an ultra rare surgery is better off here than there.
People, particularly young people, who want to start their own businesses, usually have to scrimp and save to come up with the initial capital. One method of doing this was to forgo health insurance for a few years, or to buy catastrophic medical coverage.
No more. Cheap, high deductible policies are no longer allowed. And if you forgo coverage, the gov't will take it out of you in the form of a penalty.You can sign up for low income assistance, but forget trying to amass any startup capital or you'll run afoul of the means test.
I feel sorry for young people who are trying to get ahead. I've been self insured for years and now, thanks to the ACA, my medical insurance costs will be passing my housing costs. And I don't live in a cheap area. I can practically spit on Bill Gates house from here.
Have gnu, will travel.
And as for the Rep. govenors that refused the Medicaid expansion, they did the cost analysis.
I call bullshit on it having anything to do with a cost analysis. This was ALL about politics. This is simply republicans dragging their heels at the expense of a bunch of poor people for political grandstanding. I live in a state with a Republican governor and a republican majority legislature and they passed the medicaid expansion because it makes financial sense. The terms of the deal are quite clear and the cost of providing medical care to those poor people isn't going to go away whether or not the medicare expansion gets passed.
Some governors plan long term and not just short term.
Then you would expect to see states led by democrats doing the same thing. The fact that all the refusals are coming from the opposition party tells you everything you need to know about this issue.
Back when I worked for one of the top defense contractors, they really didn't pay us very competitively. I was looking around, and encouraged a good friend of mine to do so as well. He was a really good engineer, and deserved better. Unfortunately, he told me he couldn't.
You see, a few months after hiring on right out of college, he discovered he had diabetes. Our employer's insurance continued covering him (because they had to), but if he tried to go anywhere else nothing diabetes-related would be covered, as it would be considered a "preexisting condition". He was trim, and healthy and kept good care of himself, but every 2 years or so something would go wrong and he'd end up in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Without coverage for this, he'd be a financial disaster. He was stuck working there.
This is the point where a person starts to wonder how many other folks like him were out there. How many people had developed conditions that made them essentially indentured servants? And how much had this situation screwed over the natural economy that our country should have?
I know "pre-existing condition" exceptions are outlawed now. But our current Congress tried to reinstate them more than 50 times, last session. We're just one good Republican election away from getting them back.
I'm definitely calling BS on this one. By huge margins, people were happy with their insurance plans pre-Obamacare (statistics bear this out). I was, and many people I know were too.
Now, I am worried what will happen when all the regs finally do kick in. I have a great plan now through work for my family and I, and I know if ObamaCare isn't changed or repealed, my out of pocket costs will absolutely jump by hundreds of dollars. Why? Because our plan now doesn't technically cover all the things that ObamaCare mandates (but crap we don't need and never will need like contraceptives, maternity, etc. etc. etc.). Once it's required to cover those things, the costs will absolutely increase, there's no getting around it.
Doctors' pay is going down, not up. My wife is a doctor.
Want to really make sure people have coverage so they can start more small business? Repeal the ACA and replace it with universal healthcare. Eliminate personal and corporate income taxes and replace it with a national sales tax that everyone pays, including corporations, on items that are not for manufacture or resale (i.e. equipment and office supplies). So that takes care of the double whammy of self-employment tax. Then legal marijuana nationwide and tax it to pay for health care!!!
Compare that to an area where schools have someone on staff who can prescribe pills, or doctors will insist you consider it...
No school I am aware of in the US (and I work part time in a school) has anyone who would be permitted to even give out a vitamin pill much less prescribe anything. The liability alone prohibits it. The ONLY thing a school nurse or trainer is generally allowed to do is either give a bag of ice, give out a bandaid for minor cuts or send the child home to get medical care from a licensed doctor. They are NEVER allowed to prescribe, give out or even recommend any sort of medication.
There are different premiums based on age. My $355/month plan would cost my friend $800/month based on an age difference.
The government does set prices through medicare. Whatever medicare pays the insurance companies will reduce their payments to.
DogDude: Hey lotard, he's paying a few hundred bucks a month for ***insurance*** - not healthcare.. They are two separate entities, the later being far more expensive than insurance premiums..
Oh, you haven't realized ACA doesn't do squat to reduce actual healthcare costs?? Maybe you and Pelosi should hook up.
They probably do, your probably talking to a high functioning moron.
Cheap storage VM.
How about instead of cost shifting and purchase pooling we actually work on what medical care costs in the first place? In the US you can got to Cook County or the US Federal court in the Eastern District of Texas and drive up a drug company's everyday costs by suing them in a class action for side effects they already disclosed before you bought their drug. There should be some sort of grand jury or board of people with a clue who decide the merit of these things before millions are spent on lawyers.
The for-profit speculative commission-only trial lawyers are a big part of service and product costs for drug companies, hospitals, clinics, doctors, nurses, and even medical assistants and medical techs. If you want to make healthcare more affordable through insurance cost changes, change the cost of malpractice insurance so that only people who actually screw up need to pay exorbitant premiums. When I lived in Illinois it was really difficult to get a doctor's appointment within six months without crossing state lines because the malpractice rates caused several of the doctors in the area to retire early or move to more sensible states.
Also, why do we have federal and state funds going into basic research at universities that gets patented and sold to corporations to turn into products? If research comes from a largely government-funded school then the NIH or someone should be licensed to then sublicense any of those patents to all comers for a reasonable fee.
Also, why do the drug companies pay the FDA to fast-track drugs? The PDUFA means that in order to get faster drug trials, the deeper pockets get faster times to market. If we're spending billions of dollars to improve healthcare, why don't we fund the FDA sufficiently to get the best drugs approved fastest rather than the most heavily promoted ones? Why don't we partner with other developed countries to do joint trials that meet the standards of the FDA and its counterparts in, say, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and Brazil with all the agencies reviewing all the data and making decisions for their own constituencies rather than repeating the trials over and over?
Sure, have the "freedom" to start your own (possibly unprofitable) business by not having to worry about pesky bills and responsibilities.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My experience is the opposite. My former company recently lost funding and I lost my health insurance. Luckily the ACA kicked in soon after and I got coverage for about $1000 per month *less* than the last time I was on COBRA. And I'll seriously consider keeping the coverage once I get another job.
Here's what Krugman had to say. If you say you did the math, you might be right, but there are a lot of BS health care stories out there. The big benefit of Obamacare is that it limits your (pemium+copayments) to ~$8,000. One big weakness of Obamacare is that when you find an "affordable" plan, it might have a small pool of doctors, it might not have a doctor that you've been using, and it might not have an competent doctors at all. Single payer would have been better, but, as Uwe Reinhardt says, the American political system is too corrupt for that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
Health Care Horror Hooey
Paul Krugman
FEB. 23, 2014
(Right-wingers convinced Americans that farms are being broken up to pay "death tax" estate liabilities, but there is not one single example. Now the Republicans are creating Obamacare horror stories, which don't hold up upon fact checking. In the GOP response to the State of the Union address, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers claimed "Bette in Spokane" had lost her good insurance and was forced to pay $700 a month more. Local reporters found the real Betty, and found out [Bette Grenier had a catastrophic plan, and she refused to look on the ACA web site.] In Michigan, Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch Brothers, is running an ad about Julie Boonstra, who has leukemia, saying that her new policy will have unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. But Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post found that she will be saving more than she will be paying in out-of-pocket costs. [The Obamacare out-of-pocket maximum is $6,350. Her premiums were cut in half, from $1,100/mo to $571/mo.])
[T]he true losers from Obamacare generally aren’t very sympathetic. For the most part, they’re either very affluent people affected by the special taxes that help finance reform, or at least moderately well-off young men in very good health who can no longer buy cheap, minimalist plans. Neither group would play well in tear-jerker ads.
There are FAR MORE PEOPLE in the U.S. than in Canada as well.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
were well below what I was getting with my expensive individual insurance policy a few years ago.
Of course medical costs were much cheaper a few years ago. Why do you think the ACA finally got enough traction? Insurance costs are outpacing inflation at incredible rates.
It is worth remembering that insurance companies must comply with regulations requiring them to pay out a percentage of their revenue and ACA gives them more revenue in the form of previously uninsured people being forced to become customers. If your insurance went up during the last few years, it was not the ACA it was either pricier risk factors in your life, or you were underpaying to begin with and the adjusters finally got around to fixing the problem.
Let me guess; you have teenagers that may start driving soon, already have, or have daughters in an area with above average teen pregnancy rates. Your new employer's insurance will get around to rectifying things out for their own profit soon enough.
And the policies of the current administration are a LARGE reason we're losing small business in the US.
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Small businesses are alive and well. I run one myself and I work with entrepreneurs daily. Every piece of evidence I've seen contradicts your argument. Please back up this blanket assertion with some actual facts.
We almost seem to be actively trying to make it impossible for US small businesses to succeed with ACA and too many regulations and endless paperwork and taxation.
The ACA HELPS small business. My company was able to get health insurance through the ACA for our employees and cut expenses while doing so. Our employees generally pay less than before, the company's saves $10K/year on the cost of insurance and none of our employees will lose their coverage if they lose their job. Explain to me the downside here.
I did the same thing as the original poster. For years I've been a self employed consultant. On January 1st my insurance was canceled. The plan the insurer offered that was ACA compatible was a little over twice what I was paying. This prompted me to look on the exchange. The cheapest insurance on the exchange was 20% higher than what I was paying, fewer doctors by far, offered no out of network coverage, slightly higher co-pays and the same deductible as my old plan. I took a job with one of my best customers.
The vast majority of bankruptcies in America were related to medical bills as recently as last year, even with people who had insurance.
Depending on where you go, a "routine" doctor's visit can range from $50 to $200. Still, it's much cheaper for both you and an insurance company to cover a once a year "wellness" visit and catch anything early on than it is for you to skip the yearly visit since it costs an extra $50, and then suddenly learn you've had a slow growing tumor in your ear and now you're going deaf.
Catch anything early on? Oh, you put so much faith in those wellness checkups. Most of that "diagnosis" is left on the paper, and your cheap-ass insurance only pays for the doctor to be paying attention for about 2 minutes per paying customer. Better talk fast if you've got family history.
So, I take it from this that before ACA you had health insurance while a full-time consultant? Out of curiosity further on that point, are the figures that you discovered along the same path of rate increases that have been going on for years now? Was all of this the result of having to dump an older, set policy rate for a current plan--ie, anything that would require switching policies would have had the same net effect on the price/options? I'm asking all this because I"m curious just how much this is ACA and how much of this is SOP when it comes to health insurance.
No, I'm pretty sure the point is to fill the medicaid loophole. That is, one of the major unpaid/underpaid costs hospitals face is their requirement to treat emergency cases if they accept medicaid dollars. It's gotten to the point that some hospitals refuse medicaid just for that reason as even with the overtesting--really, a sort of fraud--, there just isn't remotely enough compensation to foot the bill for all the uninsured. The only directly* reasonable course is to effectively require everyone to have their own insurance. But, as you note, the health insurance rates/coverage are horrible in a lot of locales (and really have been getting worse a lot faster than the inflation rate).
So, it seems a necessity to (1) open up exchanges to push a lot of the available plans together to allow people to choose, (2) require consistent plans so that people can reasonably shop for insurance instead of focusing heavily on every little detail, and (3) to subsidize the very poorest so that they'll pay for at least some of their own coverage. Consequentially, of course, even the best case scenario is that health insurance rates will stay overly high for years as the rate of competition will be rather slow given how people tend to buy policies on a longer scale. It's the same reason why competition in cell phones takes so long. It'd be radically different if people could or did switch policies weekly.
In any case, I do feel bad for you and agree that ACA is a mess. But too many people in Congress are so dead-set against Universal Healthcare that ACA was basically the best that could be reached at this time. Now, whether that translates into Congress and the President being against individuals and small businesses... I think it has more to do with them being seriously incompetent about the ramifications of the current system and how much we really need Universal Healthcare as a solution. I mean, both Democrats and Republicans are seriously delusional about how much the free market can magically solve a lot of the problems with our current health care system. I mean, the main part of trying to make the ACA function is precisely to force the existence of a market place precisely because health insurance is such a disaster on its own.
*There was also talk of a plan to a Single Payer system where money currently to health insurance would funnel to the government and Medicare/Medicaid effectively would pay for everything for everyone. That's obviously unworkable solutions because then people would just drop the insurance. Then you'd be back to taxing people a la Medicare/Medicaid...and that's basically how it'd have to go anyways. So, that's why I said "direct" since everything else turns back into government taxes and pays for health care. That's almost certainly the better approach, but then as I say it would have never passed.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Yes, A anecdote from you that counters all other examples sure is meaningful.
It's also as accurate as you other posts, as in not.
"The cost of individual health care plans was insane,"
which has nothing to do with ACA
Frankly, I think your stupid or lying. But hey, I've only spend the last 3 months breaking down ACA numbers and running comparative studies on current cost due to ACA vs what insurance companies had projected their increase in cost prior to ACA, so what the hell do I know?
" it's a lot easier to monitor and tax large corporate entities than it is to chase after a bunch of little ones."
Another point to the 'you are stupid' bucket right there.
Post AC becasue my employer wouldn't be too happy, but I am really, really sick of hear this bull crap. Not to mention seeing Experts in the field be removed from interviews, edit out or cancelled whenever their actual data counters certain large dog faced media companies false balance.
credible hulk SMASH!
It varies from state to state! Stop saying "The ACA raise health care costs!" then "no it didn't!" "yes it did!" "no it didn't!"
If the ACA laws match what your state already had, then the plans will remain the same and the costs will remain the same. If the ACA requirements were higher/stricter than what your state required, then your insurance benefits and costs will increase. If the ACA requirements are lower than what your state required, then... I'm not sure...
I live in Maryland, where most but not all of the ACA rules were already in place. My individual health insurance plan will change very little. It was +/-10% from what my employer offered. The ACA now requires a few provisions that resulted in a nominal increase in my health care costs.
My local NPR station, WYPR, has had a program "Maryland Morning" where they have been going over this for months. They compared to other states where costs are going up because those states allowed health care plans that covered nothing but hangnails and scraped knees.
Depends on your age, I'm turning 60, and the wife is 62, health insurance for us is in the neighborhood of $1,200 - $1,900 per month; that's more than most mortgage payments! There no rhyme or reason for the prices that is appearent, there are plans with deceint coverage and high deductables that are cheaper than plans with for-crap coverage and deductables of $20,000! My subsidy is just over $900.00 which is good for me, not so good for the rest of the taxpayers.
I know this sounds outlandish, so here's Subsidy Calculator and Health insurance quote site so feel free to try different scenario yourself.
Yes I can see somebody making good money and still not being able to afford health insurance.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It is interesting that you fail to consider that opening auto insurance to interstate competition not only caused rates to plummet through the floor, but it also meant that anyone could freely move about the country without having to worry about who was going to gouge them next.
The shills and the apologists just can't admit that this law has been a disaster, and as a result just keep changing their justifications as each prior one is proven false. First 30 million uninsured people were supposed to get insurance, then everyone was supposed to save $2500 a year, then if you liked your plan/doctor you could keep it, now if you had a plan before you were comfortable with it was "junk insurance" and wasn't really insurance anyways, you should be happy for the privilege of having to pay more for something you didn't ask for.
When will you people learn to cut the partisan bullshit and call out shit policy when it's staring you right in the face?
The Harvard study they relied on? It's crap. Note that even your link only claimed 57%. I would dispute whether that qualifies as a VAST majority.
The self reported figure from the study came in at 29%, which is probably a better number. The 62%, and even the 57% in your link rely on a very broad definition of medical bankruptcy. Some with $500,000 in other debt and $5,001 in medical debt shouldn't really count as a medical bankruptcy.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
So we've got young and middle aged people carrying the burden of health care costs for their elders (been that way as long as I've been alive), the least you can do is kick in for contraceptives and maternity care. It's only fair. It's not like fairness and consideration for others is a cornerstone of a functioning society or anything.
Too many people would rather burn it all down if it isn't done their way, or it benefits people they don't value.
Cheap storage VM.
I have a great plan now through work for my family and I, and I know if ObamaCare isn't changed or repealed, my out of pocket costs will absolutely jump by hundreds of dollars. Why? Because our plan now doesn't technically cover all the things that ObamaCare mandates (but crap we don't need and never will need like contraceptives, maternity, etc. etc. etc.). Once it's required to cover those things, the costs will absolutely increase, there's no getting around it.
Complain all you want about the cost of covering contraceptive. The Department of Health and Human Services has studied it and concluded that it actually costs LESS to include it:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/contraceptives/ib.shtml
And when you say "my family", do you just mean you and your wife, or do you mean you have kids too? If the latter...gee, it's great now that you already have your kids that you no longer need that maternity coverage, but perhaps you could think about somebody besides yourself. Even if it's the former (you don't have kids), or if you weren't fortunate enough yourself to have insurance when you had kids, I can't really support the idea of not providing maternity care. You could make the argument that you shouldn't have kids if you can't afford the cost of the care and delivery yourself, but the reality is, you know that's not going to stop 99% of people. Most people are going to just get pregnant (intentionally or not) and then figure out how to deal with the costs, which probably means minimizing the amount of prenatal care they get, which is a terrible idea for the health of the unborn kids (who have no influence over the care they receive but have to live a lifetime with the consequences of it)
Why would anyone think the Government could run healthcare?
Let's see, maybe because they already do through Medicare and other programs. Maybe because governments around the world do a highly competent job of it for better outcomes and lower cost than we incur in the US. Maybe because reflexively assuming governments are incapable of doing anything well is demonstrably false. Maybe because health insurance is a marketplace that is used by everyone and CANNOT be operated effectively or humanely without government involvement.
Is there any sign of competence or efficiency in Medicare, Medicade, or the VA?
Quite a bit actually. Not saying they don't have their flaws (they do) but they are hardly the debacles you seem to be implying.
There is not one single thing that the Government of the US has ever done more efficiently than the private sector.
What a bunch of crap. There are plenty of things the private sector does an absolutely crap job of. Policing, firefighting, military, infrastructure, medical care for at risk groups (elderly and poor especially), basic research, the judiciary, banking regulation, environmental protection, and quite a bit more. Any time you have a situation where market forces do not work well, the private sector is demonstrably unable to deal with the problem. I'm all for doing as much with the private sector as we can but the argument that the private sector is always better is absurd, wrong and frankly damaging to our society.
Quality. They come to go to places like the Mayo Clinic. The health care problem in the US is not the quality of the health care, its the quantity of health care. Sure maybe you can make a case that adding more health care might lower the average quality, but I highly doubt that places like Mayo are really going to be affected that much.
The government doesn't set prices for procedures. The fed could extend the medicare pricing list to everyone instead of having to deal with each insurance company's "negotiated pricing" and arcane "most favored nation" contract rules.
The government can and they should just set across the board prices for medical procedures in line with the medicare prices.
I would have preferred a primarily free market health care system with just a more robust safety net for basic medical care paid for with a more equitable and broad based tax, but if you are going to force consumers to buy a health insurance product, then you should at least have the decency to fix the prices for the actual health care services.
> I call bullshit
Then you probably have no clue whatsoever.
Insurance rates have been climbing like crazy over the last 10 years and they were already insane in some places even before that. If you are in a major technology nexus,the rates are likely especially gruesome.
Also quite often the rate you see as a mere employee is just PART of the total cost.
The idea of liberating us from our employers sound nice. I just don't believe for a minute that the ACA is actually going to achieve that.
The status quo will continue regardless of what that is in your particular jurisdiction (individual insurance feasible or not).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How on earth will a doctor find a tumor in my ear for $50? With that money, they could at most spend 20 minutes with me and probably only about 10 with the rest for reporting the findings to a computer. With so much to cover in a human, they could only find the tumor if a said that I think there is something in my ear... and if I was suspecting something then I would go see a doctor anyway?
Now, I agree with the point you were making: yearly check-ups are worth it. But I find the example pretty hard to swallow.
The vast majority of bankruptcies in America were related to medical bills as recently as last year, even with people who had insurance.
Depending on where you go, a "routine" doctor's visit can range from $50 to $200. Still, it's much cheaper for both you and an insurance company to cover a once a year "wellness" visit and catch anything early on than it is for you to skip the yearly visit since it costs an extra $50, and then suddenly learn you've had a slow growing tumor in your ear and now you're going deaf.
Your main point is right. Co-payments are terrible health policy.
Actually, the most common example is people with asthma. If they use their controller medication, they won't get asthma attacks, but the controller medication can be expensive. There were health insurance plans that covered 100% of medication costs. Then they shifted to co-payments. Even with small co-payments, people stopped taking their controller medication. They got asthma attacks, and wound up in the hospital. One ER trip will cost as much as several years of controller medication. So the plans wound up paying more under co-payments as they did with 100% payments. Same with co-payments for blood pressure medication -- more heart attacks and strokes. If you want to look this up, to make sure I'm not repeating an urban myth, it was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine by Amal N. Trivedi, who published a few other studies like that. Also see the Rand Health Insurance Experiment on Wikipedia or elsewhere.
The only shit policy is the fact that the bloodsucking insurance industry was allowed to remain at all.
Another Democrat talking. Hide your wallet.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I don't see how you can claim that coverage under the ACA limits my yearly expenses to $8K. The cheapest plan that have for me and my family in California is $1200 a month, and the most expensicve is $2200 a month. And both plans are full of only-covers-80-percent of this, and co-pay and out-of-pocket that. I would expect, with only routine visits and maybe one injury per year, to pay about 15 to 20 Thousand a year.
I thought the plans my small startup company offers were weak, but I'll have to ask my HR how much of the premium they are paying. I'm only paying $250 a month for medical, so they must be paying like 90% of the premium. Or the plans offered by the ACA are a rip-off.
So, you're pissed about how much medical insurance actually costs? Great! Welcome to the party. We ran out of chairs years ago, but there's still plenty of bitter malcontent to go around. This is the real world, and it's why we tried to get single-payer passed, but ended up with this mangled garbage because some stupidly-rich white guys are pissed that a stupidly-rich black guy got elected.
Those $200 corporate plans that everyone is raving about? They're $200 because your company is shelling out $1400 as part of your benefits package. They also get a hella better deal due to their negotiating tactics, but that's what the exchanges are supposed to address... for the States that decided to actually get with the program and provide paid-for services to their populations, as required under the law.
Sorry to hear that your State sucks, and that you've been shielded from the real cost of healthcare coverage for long enough that the price tag comes as a complete shock.
Good News! It's already implemented.
Any of those savings (which could be considered part of an employees salary) get passed on to the employee?
Any of those savings (which could be considered part of an employees salary) get passed on to the employee?
We were able to give raises we couldn't before. The company kept some of the savings and some of it got passed on.
The challenge is that we offered health coverage to everyone but not everyone took it. That was their choice to forego the insurance. It's unfair (and can create legal problems) to give raises only to those who took insurance through our company when others are doing the same job just as well. Any time you have two people doing the same job you have to have a justification if you are going to pay them differently based on responsibilities or performance. We also offer an IRA with an employer match but not everyone chooses to participate. We don't give raises to those who don't participate.
"I was getting with my expensive individual insurance policy a few years ago."
and you left consultancy to go to the corporate world...why? No one took away expensive individual insurance policies.
YOU CAN STILL BY INSURANCE ON THE OPEN MARKET.
And you get all the benefits from the insurance reform. So if your child develops a disease* you insurnace company can't jerk you around, and later in life you child won't be denied.
You should look at any increase costs and compare them to pre-Obama insurance rate increase projections. You insurance were already going to go up, probably a lot better ACA
"Before we continue, please tell me that you already signed up and paid for your ACA policy, and love what it does for you."
That is logically fallacious. It has nothing to do with the argument. Especially considering you can still buy on the open market.
ACA says you need to have insurance the meets certain min. qualification.
That said, because of the ACA, I will be leaving my government job and starting my own small software company at the beginning of the fiscal year. I can do this because of ACA.
(and dodging the self-employment tax)
there is no such thing. What you are doing is having a corporation pay half of the tax. It's the same amount regardless.
*As a father, I certainly hope that doesn't happen to you becasue I know how hard it is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Traction? Democrats have been wanting to take over healthcare for years. They finally got their chance and they ramrodded it through. There was no traction.
Here we have the typical Obamacare Kool Aid Addict. According to them, you were too stupid to pick a policy that covered you adequately. The ONLY solution is a Government plan. Anyone who disagrees is some kind of evil person who thinks only of himself.
Pnutjam, you have been called out as a fucking sock puppet. You probably don't even have health insurance through Obamacare and no doubt when you finally are FORCED off your employer's policy you will scream bloody murder.
It is not offensive to Godwin to classify you as a Brownshirt serving your Fuhrer because that's the devotion you show for him and that's the fanaticism you show for the agenda.
Still, it's much cheaper for both you and an insurance company to cover a once a year "wellness" visit and catch anything early on than it is for you to skip the yearly visit since it costs an extra $50, and then suddenly learn you've had a slow growing tumor in your ear and now you're going deaf.
Definitely. I mostly agree with the THEORY of insurance not covering your routine visits (other than the part where the doctors overcharge and you don't have the benefit of insurance negotiated prices, so you pay $600 for a $100 visit). But in PRACTICE it really just means people skipping the cheap routine visits to save themselves money (so they can pay off that 60" TV they just bought) and instead racking up huge bills treating expensive-but-easily-preventable (or inexpensive-if-caught-early) illnesses.
But the "wellness" visits aren't going to catch a cancer unless you're damn near death. Most cancers don't present symptoms during a treatable stage. That's why there is so much hub-bub around the whole lab-on-a-chip thing. If we can detect cancers at the cost of your normal annual blood panel (if you have one) then we can save big dollars overall with treating cancers. A large number of people who know they have cancer today will not survive it and it has nothing to do with the medical industry playing cheap into the treatment... these are people that there is no treatment for because of how far their cancer has progressed.
Aside from that. Most people in America today would be damn near bankrupt if their car's transmission gave out today. Americans are carrying a ton of debt, most of any savings they have are tied up in a 401(k) and they're still acting like living paycheck to paycheck is just fine. Don't blame the medical industry for people who make damn near the poverty level still putting a 2000 dollar TV on their credit card while paying a 200 dollar a month cable bill. Americans have bought into the material culture in a way that should scare the hell out of any rational person. These people can't afford what they have today let alone what they'll have to deal with if they ever retire.
Think it's a joke? How many times do you see reports of people having to choose between heat and food but they still have a smart phone hanging off their ear? Just the other day I seen where a local power company had a billing issue and one customer was hit was a bill that was 200 dollars more than their normal bill would have been. They cried that they couldn't afford to eat. If 200 dollars is putting you back that much do you really need a cable bill every months? I've seen someone complaining that their car was too expensive to operate when gas went up by a dime while they were tugging on a Marlboro cigarette. Do you really think that these people are ready for a real emergency in their lives?
When are we going to stop blaming Big [Industry] for the failings of the average American? Not to say that it doesn't happen, it does but more often than not people spend as quick as they make and they have luxuries that our grandparents never dreamed of but it's still not enough for them. The lower and middle class want to jet set like the rich and famous but they also want to cry if they can't make ends meet. That's crazy. Not enough people save, even less invest. This is the problem at hand for the majority of people. We've built a system that allows people to be irresponsible but we blame corporations for the irresponsibility of the people. That's simply insane.
So the next time you see someone crying about how they can't get by because little Johny broke his arm and it took them to zero just look around their home.... Little Johny wearing an 80 dollar sweatshirt with a sports logo silk screen on it? That could have been 10 dollars. Those pictures of the family at Disney? A week long Disney vacation will set the average American family back a few months pay. They can't afford to spend time with their kids because they work two jobs but they can afford HBO and an Xbox? Seriously? We're destroying our own lives in a terrible way.
I call bullshit. You had a "full-time consultancy" but couldn't afford a few hundred bucks a month for health care? Right.
Obama shill or just ignorant, can't figure it out. Even those of us up here in Canadaland can't quite decide if Americans were insane, or just stupid to let the entire ACA go forward. Well whatever guys, feel free to get fucked over a barrel. Or smarten up and switch it to a state(aka province) run system like we have up here. One of my friends who I used to visit in Indianapolis moved to Alaska, 8ish years ago. His families premium would be $2700/mo+15k deductible. That was from the $210/mo with $1200 deductible. And the same for both of his sisters and their families in varying degrees. And I probably shouldn't mention that his one sister had her hours cut to 30h/weekly from 60h/weekly because that's how the employer decided to cut back on expenses.
Hey I know, maybe you can hook up with Harry Reid and scream at the top of your lungs that this is all fake too.
Om, nomnomnom...
0bama is a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure.
Harry Reid is that you?
Om, nomnomnom...
Here's a subsidy calculator and here's a market place see what's happening for yourself.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Some of the "benefits" from the insurance reform aren't. When you make minimum standards for these plans that are different from what many people want, it makes the plan more expensive. It gives people extra coverage that they won't use and don't need but will end up paying a lot of extra money for.
What!? you don't want to buy insurance for other people?!
Most all insurance you buy is for "other people". If you don't make a claim, then your premiums paid someone elses. That's not "socialism". That's "insurance".
Socialism is paying for health care even for people who couldn't afford insurance. We do that too. But I happen to think its a good thing, and think healthcare SHOULD be socialized in a civilized society.
Insurance is supposed to be there for EMERGENCIES, not to run you $10 copay for routine Dr. visits. That needs to be something you save and pay for, just like any other necessity of modern life, like utilities, food and gas.
That's one of those ideas that sounds good but doesn't work when you try them out in the real world. Most other developed countries have health care systems that pay 100% of costs (although non-American Slashdotters may be informative on that). Health insurance isn't car insurance.
The biggest problem is that once people have to pay for "routine" visits, they don't go on routine visits. Obviously you are one of those people who can afford to pay for a $200 doctor's visit out of pocket. Maybe half of Americans are in your category. The other half aren't. Doctors have no end of stories about people who didn't get routine care because they couldn't afford it, and wound up with preventable, fatal diseases. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...
The other problem with "emergency" care is, "what is an emergency?" If I have to pay $100 for a doctor's visit myself, but my insurance pays for my $2,000 ER visit, I'm going to have a lot of emergencies. That actually was the problem in the Swiss health care system, which was mostly a catastrophic system which didn't kick in fully until you had passed a certain amount (It might have been $30,000). Once you reach $30,000, the insurance company has to pay for everything, 100%, so the doctors give them CAT scans, tests, specialist consultations, etc., and bill it all to the insurance company.
This is the type of policy and situation that is usually perfect for healthy younger folks that don't need tons of coverage for routine things.
Think about it. Any policy is perfect for healthy younger folks who never need coverage. The only people who need health insurance are the ones who get sick. If you develop multiple sclerosis or lupus, you can live a much more normal life if you can afford to get a lot of health care. There are drugs that can save your life and keep you out of a wheelchair for $50,000 a year.
I knew a young, libertarian Republican who had severe psoriasis, which put him in the hospital once or twice a year. The drugs he was taking were damaging his liver and kidneys. There were new, more effective, safer drugs -- but they cost $100,000 a year. What did he do? Government handouts. His wife was a government employee, and he was covered on her policy.
". By huge margins, people were happy with their insurance plans pre-Obamacare (statistics bear this out). "
interesting please link to the paper that bears that out, becasue have several sets of data that indicate otherwise.
Sigh. Are you stupid? Or gullible?
"I have a great plan now through work for my family and I, and I know if ObamaCare isn't changed or repealed, my out of pocket costs will absolutely jump by hundreds of dollars"
based on..what?
Bear in mind, you prices were going up 20-50% anyways based on insurance projects. If you want to look that up, I suggest you use the google data range to limited searcher prior to about 2008 or so. Otherwise it becomes difficult to filter out the ACA opinion page dilution from the results
"Why? Because our plan now doesn't technically cover all the things that ObamaCare mandates"
so you have cheap insurance that doesn't do any real good.
"(but crap we don't need and never will need like contraceptives, maternity, etc. etc. etc.)"
What insurance doesn't cover those items now?
"Once it's required to cover those things, the costs will absolutely increase, there's no getting around it."
and? the question is will they go up more then they where going to go up anyways? the answer is.. not likely. Defiantly not if the insurance you have is worth a damn.
Nonsense. It's always cheaper to pay your own way. If you are "getting something for free" through an insurance company then they are necessarily going to want their cut. ANY payment is going to have it's own transaction overhead and THAT is not cheap.
$200 is still a trivial amount for an insurance claim and something that anyone with a lick of sense or mathematical savvy should avoid.
Stuff isn't free.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Copayments are more likely to get you to go to the doctor/dentist on a regular basis for checkups and equalize the price in services from differing providers. You can go where you like (in general) and still pay the same price. How many people are driving around in vehicles that should have had the oil changed thousands of miles ago? Money spent on preventative medicine (including regular checkups) has a massive return.
take off you hoser.
We get that you love your government funded health care. That's great. Unfortunately, as a citizen of the US, my opinion is that I favor private medical care with zero government intrusion. As a free man, I am able to make my own way and make my own decisions relative to my body and health. Why should I have to pay for someone who doesn't give a shit about their body? Smokers, heavy drinkers, drug addicts, all would be covered under a government sponsored policy. So all my hard work; going to the gym, eating healthy, moderating means nothing to my bottom line because I am stuck funding some asshole who simply wants to take. So who is the greedy one here, me or the jerk I have to subsidize? As an aside, let's analyze Social Security. I am 51 years old and all I have heard for the last 20 years of my working life is that I probably won't see a dime. If our government can't run a simple retirement program without fucking it up, how are we supposed to trust them with trillions in medical care dollars? Can you imagine the expense of managing that? I shudder every time I think about it.
Standard Obamacare Sockpupper response, "Your insurance was crap and you were too stupid to know it".
Sandy, of course, read cayenne8's policy and she is an expert in Insurance.
And there is no better way to convince people to support a government program than to call those who aren't in it a dolt.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I have a family of four, and I am paranoid about coverage so I have a low deductible and lots of coverage.
1000 a month. Maybe you need to look around more? is there some state based thing that's getting you?
"$1800 /month with a $5,000 - $10,000 "
that's.. well stupid. Are you a smoker?
Are you sure you've actually looked at it?
Here is what I get for 1000.10 a month and my income gets no subsidies, and I live in Oregon:
DEDUCTIBLE (I): $100
DEDUCTIBLE (F): $200
OOP MAX (I): $1,000
OOP MAX (F): $2,000
PLAN LEVEL:
PLATINUM
If I got the plan with the deductible you state, it would cast me 366 dollars. I just looked it up.
Thanks for that. I am not in the individual insurance marketplace. I think obamacare is better then the alternative of doing nothing, but I really want a single payer plan. Insurance needs to be divorced from employment. If i have to pay for it anyway, why not make it a tax and do it right.
BTW, I have a pretty well fleshed out account for a sock puppet. I'm pretty sure my real name could be easily linked to this account. Unlike the AC who is calling me out and probably works for some GOP politician, or is too stupid to see the strings they are dancing at the end of...
Cheap storage VM.
Seems to depend on a case by case basis.
My math worked out great. Previously I paid 50% of the premium for my company's blue cross PPO group health insurance plan to the tune of $400/mo. It had a $60 copay, $60 drug copay, and $5000 annual deductible.
Now I pay $350/mo for a blue cross Silver PPO with the same doctors I had before. It has a $30 copay, $150 drug copay (the drug copay seems to be where the insurance companies are really jacking up prices, I guess since they can't stop you from signing up if you're already sick) and I think a $4000 annual deductible. Thanks to my employer not being an asshole and giving me the other $400/mo it used to contribute towards my insurance, I'm coming out on top even after the extra $150/mo for my meds.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Get this! You two are in different states, which would make your experiences completely different. Who knew such variation existed, right? Especially with healthcare!
If you have to save to go to the doctor, people won't go to the doctor for routine care.
When people don't go to the doctor for routine care, they have to solve the problems after they've become problems.
Ounce of prevention, pound of cure?
A real-life example... even pre-ACA.
A co-worker hates going to doctors, so it wasn't about cost, it was just about fear of doctors.
They recently had to go to the dentist for a root canal and a crown. They complained about jaw pain, thinking it was lockjaw, or whatever else the webs would say could possibly cause that discomfort. So here they are, in major pain, with a major operation, with a major bill at the end all because... they didn't want to go to the goddamn doctor for routine checkups in which they could have just paid 20 bucks for a dental cleaning once in a while and maybe another 20 bucks for a filling.
The major operations are what causes the costs to grow exponentially.
I'd rather them only pay a co-pay for regular checkups, so they'd actually go instead of having to save for it. C'mon, 120 bucks for a dental visit when you don't feel anything wrong with yourself or 120 dollars of beer. That's an obvious decision... I'd go home with the beer, I floss and brush my teeth everyday, I got no problems.... except the last time I went in I had a cavity, but that's just an exception right? right? right? /sarcasm
I am. Cost me 12% more than last year. Which is about how much my plan went up 3 years ago, and about 4% more than it went up last year. I cover myself, wife, and child.
And you must be the shittiest consultant in the world if a 1% penalty (this year) or a 2.5% penalty (cap, in 3 years) on your AGI will cost you more than losing your consultant income. If you get taxed on $100,000 a year, it will cost you $1000 this year; $2500 next year. If you're not making at least 50% more as a consultant as you do as a grunt, you're doing it wrong.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Key difference is that your premiums would have been adjusted upwards or policy canceled whenever your health has deteriorated.
Which is what happened to Brandon Boyer.
http://boingboing.net/2014/03/...
Humana screws Brandon Boyer for $100K worth of cancer bills - help him pay them
Cory Doctorow at 12:00 pm Fri, Mar 7, 2014
Our good pal Brandon "Offworld" Boyer has cancer. Lucky for Brandon, he signed up for medical insurance with Humana not long before he was diagnosed. Unlucky for him, Humana has decided unilaterally not to cover his cancer treatments and has stuck him with with a $100,000 bill.
At a previous job, I knew a secretary / office manager who was sleeping with the boss. We all thought she was nuts to think he would ever leave his wife. Later, much later, I learned that her kid had cancer. If she had lost her job, that cancer becomes a preexisting condition and her kid would have died.
When you gripe about the costs of Obamacare, I think about her.
I think you didn't have what you thought you had. Qualifying HDHPs have had a minimum deductible of over $2500 for individuals and over $5000 (yes, deductible) for the last 6+ years. I know because I've been on one. And, yes, it's awesome.
FWIW, a standard, large group medical will run about $1000/mo for a family. If you're curious what the rates are for the biggest healthcare group (i.e. best leverage) in the nation are, see this: http://www.opm.gov/healthcare-...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
>> both Democrats and Republicans are seriously delusional about how much the free market can magically solve a lot of the problems with our current health care system
One of the key requirements of any free market is free information. If you're familiar with "Medicaid oversampling" I'm guessing you're already affiliated with a health care provider. Are you currently pushing your provider to publish its prices? If not, why not?
Oh, you haven't realized ACA doesn't do squat to reduce actual healthcare costs??
I think the idea is supposed to be that shared responsibility will reduce the cost of treating uninsured people at emergency rooms, which should reduce what hospitals have to mark up to recover said costs.
"And yes, I actually looked it up."
Are you sure?
I wonder what your current rate is, are you a smoker? and is your state charging something to insurance componies?
I am upper middle aged, married 2 teenagers, non smoker in Oregon
The platinum plan I will be getting is (copied from the web site)
DEDUCTIBLE (I): $100
DEDUCTIBLE (F): $200
OOP MAX (I): $1,000
OOP MAX (F): $2,000
PLAN LEVEL:
PLATINUM
"everyone's insurance policies got canceled,"
what? how is that even true? Unless he is selling useless insurance.
" You see, he makes a commission on insurance sales. Because all of his clients now have to re-sign up for their insurance, he's basically making back all the money he already made off all of his clients the first time he signed them up."
Why would they go through him? It seems like they are paying more that way. Middle men and all.
Are you going through a person? Is that guy the one telling you the rates? I would be suspicious if that's the case.
The absolute maximum yearly out of pocket allowed under the ACA is $6700 iirc. So your insurance company is required to cover 100% of any bills once you've hit that cap.
The best way to understand the ACA is that your maximum of (premiums + out of pocket) is ~$8,000 for an individual. So whatever crazy policy you gamble on, your worst case is $8,000/year.
On the plan you had a few years ago, what was the lifetime cap? How about the yearly cap? Maximum yearly out of pocket cost? Could they drop you?
>> credible hulk SMASH!
Um...yeah. I'm sure you really have been, uh..."spend(ing) the last 3 months breaking down ACA numbers and running comparative studies on current cost due to ACA"
>> I think your stupid...Post AC becasue (authority) wouldn't be too happy
Are you sure you're not posting this during your fourth period study hall? I kind of feel like I'm talking to my kids' friends right now.
I would end up on many plans paying about $3K a year in premiums AND $3K+ in deductibles before I started having any insurance kick in. WFT?
I looked at the GOLD plan with no deductible, and it is about $590/mo...but no deductible and 100% pay. Interesting range of choices, no?
This is by design. The system finally convulsed as the Boomers and freeloaders have drawn out too many services from the health care system. Obamacare was a desperate (and I might add, wholly illegal) means of trying to keep the broken system of American health care running. Naturally, since the system is still too broken (due to all those Boomers and freeloaders), Obamacare only made the entire situation worse. Look at myself... I'm still not buying health insurance, since I still can't afford it, and the IRS can go hang for all I care, since I can't afford the "tax" either and just won't pay it anyway. Any law that when passed leads to widespread contempt for the law, is by definition not a real law.
Obamacare needs to be repealed. Not "fixed". Not "amended". REPEALED. Government in fact needs to do one or the other of:
1. Get the hell out of health care. Stop regulating it so heavily. The free market can't fix this when we constantly stop it from working.
2. Invoke official socialized medicine like every other industrialized nation has (including nations like France (#1 in the world) which merely has "universal access", not outright socialized medicine).
I actually wish that the ACA had abolished employer paid healthcare. It would be a market-leveling action. Unfortunately, most people have no idea how much their healthcare actually costs, and when they find out they are overwhelmed.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You need to call the GOP... I hear they're having real trouble finding ACA horror stories that don't turn out to be utter bullshit after thirty seconds of digging. Your story isn't utter bullshit like all the others, is it?
This is what you're referring to.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...
Health Care Horror Hooey
Paul Krugman
FEB. 23, 2014
(Right-wingers convinced Americans that farms are being broken up to pay "death tax" estate liabilities, but there is not one single example. Now the Republicans are creating Obamacare horror stories, which don't hold up upon fact checking. In the GOP response to the State of the Union address, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers claimed "Bette in Spokane" had lost her good insurance and was forced to pay $700 a month more. Local reporters found the real Betty, and found out [Bette Grenier had a catastrophic plan, and she refused to look on the ACA web site.] In Michigan, Americans for Prosperity, funded by the Koch Brothers, is running an ad about Julie Boonstra, who has leukemia, saying that her new policy will have unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. But Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post found that she will be saving more than she will be paying in out-of-pocket costs. [The Obamacare out-of-pocket maximum is $6,350. Her premiums were cut in half, from $1,100/mo to $571/mo.])
[T]he true losers from Obamacare generally aren’t very sympathetic. For the most part, they’re either very affluent people affected by the special taxes that help finance reform, or at least moderately well-off young men in very good health who can no longer buy cheap, minimalist plans. Neither group would play well in tear-jerker ads.
take off you hoser.
Earth shattering commentary from the obamacare crowd. Apparently the truth hurts so much, that the only thing left is insults. How's that "new tone" working out for you guys anyway?
Om, nomnomnom...
Lies, high deductible insurance plans and health savings accounts are still perfectly viable coverage plans.
A) this cut the project insurance growth.
B) Its not socialism. I know, every libertarian and media tard likes to call it that, but it isn't.
"That's the very DEFINITION of Socialism, take from those that have and give to those that want."
That is not the definition socialism. Although I do see your problem. It's that you are stupid. Social programs do not necessarily equal socialism.
"What!? you don't want to buy insurance for other people?!"
You have been doing that you entire life. You do know that uninsured people cost tax payers well over 200 billion a year, right?
Other countries have shown that a socialism based health care system actually works well for everyone.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Traction? Democrats have been wanting to take over healthcare for years. They finally got their chance and they ramrodded it through. There was no traction.
Ramrodded through the 1990s Republican plan, in fact. Because the 2010 Republicans would rather die than work with Democrats, even if it means repudiating their own ideas.
The old health care paradigm was broken. It was based on the idea that the majority of people went to work for a single employer and stayed there for life, so that they didn't have to deal with the "pre-existing condition" gotcha. It assumed that employment was more or less continuous, instead of months, and even years between jobs when something medically crucial might happen but no employer was there to provide insurance. And it assumed that workers weren't sliding down the income scale so that they could better handle minor medical expenses out of pocket.
Those days are gone.
I made $75 an hour just by calling a few people every day!
You can run your car on WATER using this revolutionary device!
My cousin completely paid off her mortgage using these three simple tricks.
I saved $1000 per month on my Health Insurance with ACA!
A scam is a scam is a scam.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Most pre-obamacare individual policies were the functional equivalent of the rock I keep in my pocket to ward off tigers. They made you feel good and may have actually helped with small emergencies, but they were useless when the serious issues that you thought you were covering actually came up.
That is bullcrap. I had individual insurance prior to ObamaCare, and it works just fine. It is far cheaper than the plan I could have gotten at work.
The downside is that the premiums have gone up by 100% in the three years that I have been on it, but it is still cheaper than the insurance at work, and I looked around and found that it is still cheaper than any other options.
In December, while browsing carriers, the carriers were showing 50% difference between signing up in December 2013 versus signing up in January 2014. For example, a Major Medical plan starting in December would have been $300 a month (which is very high for major medical) and if you signed up in January it would be $450 a month.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I've always assumed that the present incarnation of Obamacare was meant to be unsustainable and part of a process to get the US into a universal government run healthcare system. Those of us who have been subjected to US Government run healthcare systems such as the Military healthcare system and the VA system vary from being suspicious to outright fearfull of a Government run system. Some countries do seem able to pull it off, I doubt the US is one of them.
Further more I doubt the US is going to be able to afford both universal healthcare and being the world's lightning rod and policeman, are the rest of the developed world prepared to take up the slack?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Based on my anecdotal experience(I'm not claiming it's date)
I suspect CA, will see a sharper increase in start ups, or people able to move to jobs they enjoy, will see the biggest increase.
I will be looking for start up work again, I will only be able to do that because of ACA.
My insurance under ACA will be 300 dollar cheaper then it was in 2003 to 2005 when I was self employed. And be deductible is 1/10 of what it was then.
Anecdotes is why I spend a lot of time pouring over the actual data. Most people complaining about a raise in insurance seem to assume their insurance wasn't going up any ways; which is false
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Because $6,700 is real chump change. I know families where both parents work for at least 40 hours a week, and they have outstanding medical bills of just a few thousand dollars that they can't pay. Racking up $6,700 a year, plus the few hundred a month, is only going to make things worse.
This is absolutely NOT helping the people who the administration claimed it would.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Most people are going to just get pregnant (intentionally or not) and then figure out how to deal with the costs, which probably means minimizing the amount of prenatal care they get, which is a terrible idea for the health of the unborn kids (who have no influence over the care they receive but have to live a lifetime with the consequences of it)
But see, that's why conservatives want to get rid of Obamacare and sex ed and make contraceptives and abortion illegal. That way, we'll have more and more children born to mothers without insurance who don't want them, meaning larger and larger tax writeoffs for hospitals, meaning less federal revenue. And in the meantime, we can cut taxes, too, but let's get rid of the child tax credit so we don't have to give the parents of those unwanted children any more money. That'll starve the government so they're forced to drastically cut spending, costing millions of jobs of public sector workers and contractors, because they are lazy, inefficient, and in general, the enemy, and then we can cut unemployment benefits and social programs to harm them even further.
Yes, it will be difficult at first, but the private sector, with their new lower taxes, will take most of that new-found money and distribute it as dividends. Can't you see, it's for our children's future! Not the unwanted ones and poor ones, I mean, because they deserve what God gave them.
I have been contracting (and paying my own health care) since 1992. Under ACA my medical dropped $500/month to $1800/month (for two healthy adults). I also think the feds are irritated w/small contractors, but ACA actually helped me.
According to Paul Krugman, you're a right-wing shill!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So we've got young and middle aged people carrying the burden of health care costs for their elders (been that way as long as I've been alive), the least you can do is kick in for contraceptives and maternity care. It's only fair. It's not like fairness and consideration for others is a cornerstone of a functioning society or anything.
If I have to pay for stuff (ie, contraceptives and maternity care) I don't need, why don't you pay for stuff I need: SRS and FFS.
given that Romneycare is basically Obamacare and happened there eight years ago.
Republicans, as I understand it, are for the several states' self-determination. The federal system was supposed to let states experiment with what works for each of them. This is why Republicans who favored Romneycare at the state level oppose the federal ACA.
If you're hitting your maximum deductible every single year, you're probably using up far more medical care than you're paying in premiums AND out of pocket. The average healthy adult won't see any bills beyond their premium each month. Then your three year old falls off the monkey bars and breaks both legs and an arm, and $6700 to get everything fixed up becomes a bargain.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I have one (a HDHP). I haven't been arrested yet.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I was about to point out that you could get Major medical for probably $450, as that is what they were going for in January, but now they seem to have gone up by 30% or so. The cheapest I can find is $589. Still that is better than $1,000 a month.
Check out ehealthinsurance. You can compare rates from a bunch of different companies and plans.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
" Go buy condoms as a 14 years old in an area where religious people want to burn people who use contraceptive on a stake....good luck"
OK, dirtbag, name the place in the U.S. where some "religious people" have EVER burned anybody on a stake for trying to use a condom or any other contraception (include links to the proof of the event). Having failed at that, name a place in the US (and please include links to the proof) where those "religious people" you slander have declared their desire and/or intent to burn anybody at the stake for trying to use a contraceptive.
Your vile, over-the-top, completely dishonest accusations are part of the problem in modern political discourse. Some religious people assert that they do not wish to be forced to buy something (which they believe is immoral) for another person to use (in effect forcing those religious people to fund the "sins" of others) and the people who want that thing scream that the religious people are "bigots" or "haters" or "racists" who are trying to KILL people. There is NO WAY to have a civil dialog and come to any consensus on policy when your side is so dishonest and irrational that it makes ANY ideology or crackpot belief system reasonable by comparison. Those crazy snake-handlers look reasonable compared to you and yours.
Those $200 corporate plans that everyone is raving about? They're $200 because your company is shelling out $1400 as part of your benefits package.
No. he is talking about Insurance, now more often known as Major Medical or High Deductible plans. Anything other than these type of plans is not actually insurance, but a gourmet health plan.
About 5 years ago, I paid $175 a month for my Major Medical plan covering my wife and kids. Now, it is about $350 a month. If I tried to sign up fresh for this plan right now, it would be $589. I can't think of anything else that has happened in the last 5 years that would cause the cost of this plan to go up by 400% other than ObamaCare.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
So, government creates a problem (employer involvement in health insurance), makes it worse (subsidizes employer involvement with health insurance) and then tries to fix it by making it illegal for employers to provide insurance that is too good, and illegal to provide insurance that is too bad, and too expensive to provide any insurance at all, with the predictable effect that lots of employers are simply dropping insurance.
So, it is a fantastic outcome that some peoples insurance situation is being divorced from their employer / employment situation -- this is goodness -- but it is costing people more money, in many cases.
In my case, if I tried to buy health insurance on the BCBS ND exchange, it would be hugely expensive compared to the reduced, employer subsidized coverage I have, and, it would be much worse coverage.
In my state, many more people have lost their existing coverage than have gained coverage due to ACA.
Basically, if the feds hadn't gotten involved in this mess in the first damn place, back during WW2, I think a lot of teeth gnashing could have been avoided.
Instead, the feds are trying to claim a great achievement for maybe partially a little bit addressing a problem that is their own damn fault.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
It works fine, until you hit that cap you probably weren't aware of, brain tumor; leukemia, serious accident causing partial paralysis, failed kidney (actually your good their because you will automatically qualify for medicare), car rollover resulting in injuries and infections that eventually cause you to need a heart transplant (happened to an acquaintance); your screwed.
My point is, you are trying to protect yourself from catastrophic issues and you are only protecting yourself from bankruptcy (maybe), your not insuring care for yourself or the ones you love (the point of insurance).
Cheap storage VM.
With "take over" you actually mean "do anything about". The Republicans had, and still have, absolutely no ideas whatsoever about how to fix our broken healthcare system (well, they did have one idea a few years back that involved keeping a system of mainly private health insurers and stipulating a mandate that people need to sign up. But they seem to have abandoned that as of late..........)
When people who don't need those services are compelled to by (ultimately) the threat of violence by the government, it's hard to love the policy.
Been self employed now for just over a year. I do all of my own taxes and paperwork. It's easy. If you find it difficult you simply lack the competence to start a business and probably shouldn't. I'm not sure where this idea comes from that starting a business is difficult.
...and dodging the self-employment tax
Well you could have just pulled a John Edwards or Newt Gingrich and funneled 98% of your income through an LLC with S-corp tax rules to avoid that pesky self employment tax. Get with the times man.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Does it cover prostate cancer? There may be some females in your company who don't want to pay for that, jerk.
Definitely. I mostly agree with the THEORY of insurance not covering your routine visits (other than the part where the doctors overcharge and you don't have the benefit of insurance negotiated prices, so you pay $600 for a $100 visit). But in PRACTICE it really just means people skipping the cheap routine visits to save themselves money (so they can pay off that 60" TV they just bought) and instead racking up huge bills treating expensive-but-easily-preventable (or inexpensive-if-caught-early) illnesses.
With Major Medical, you pay out of pocket for the routine visits, but the contract rate still applies Even though the doctor charges $500 for the visit, the plan adjudicates it down to $50 and you pay that. All for $600 a month. (Used to be $150, but you know, ObamaCare). Even if you add up your Major Medical premiums and max out your deductible, you will find that it is still cheaper than just the premiums on a typical healthcare plan. And don't forget that typecal healthplans STILL have deductibles, copay and coinsurance on top of the premiums.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'll probably get modded to -1 by the Left AND Right for saying this, but I think the order in which we allow competition is important too. In your example, we're allowing states to compete for business from credit card companies, but we're also effectively forced to use credit cards because of their privileged position within the financial system. (Unless you're exclusively a cryptocurrency user and don't do business with 90% of the economy, but those people are a small minority)
In the case of health insurance, your prediction of the results is probably correct - we're forced to buy a product but the sellers are given choices, so they'll choose to screw over their helpless "customers". But it's not because interstate competition is a bad idea, it's because giving corporations more freedom than people is a bad idea.
False. Stop with the lies, or at least look up the info you are given from the news.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
Do you think, that just maybe, the slump was cause from the economy? hmmm?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's the case for every plan you looked at. It's in the law.
Until you hit the out-of-pocket cap. That cap varies by plan, with the "higher" metals having a lower cap.
Unfortunately, the complexity of the plans means there is no universal "this is your cheapest option" plan.
For very healthy people, a bronze plan will probably be cheapest.
For people who see a doctor regularly, a silver plan will probably be the cheapest - lower co-pays, deductible and out-of-pocket cap. So they will pay less overall even though they pay more for the insurance.
Sure, blame the Nazis. AS we know on slashdot every president is the one responsible for everything that ever happened and if you try to explain that some things have long term impacts, you are branded an apologist.
Someitme /. weighs on me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Minimums are needed because cross subsidisation is rather integral to having affordable healthcare for everyone."
Yes. Cross-subsidization (also known as "socialism") has resulted in most people I have spoken to paying 40% to 60% more on their premiums, with a higher deductible.
It has also resulted in fewer young people with insurance, because their premiums went way up. It's DUMB to raise rates on the demographic that (A) is essential to funding the program, and (B) needs it the least.
I grant that it is a good thing to get insurance away from ties to "traditional" employment. But doing so through Obamacare is kind of like cleaning your windows by taking a sledgehammer to them.
What state are you in? Many states... (southern ones, cough cough) didn't take up the Free To The State expansion of medicaid, which left a big gap in coverage. Cough cough, as the conservative governors of those states new would happen.
The biggest problem is that once people have to pay for "routine" visits, they don't go on routine visits. Obviously you are one of those people who can afford to pay for a $200 doctor's visit out of pocket. Maybe half of Americans are in your category. The other half aren't.
Perhaps if they chose a Major Medical plan instead of an ObamaCare plan, they could use the $600 a month savings to put some money aside to go to the doctor once a year.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Are you in a Southern state? Many of the conservative governors in southern states declined the expansion of medicaid, which would have been covered by the feds, leaving a huge gap in insurance coverage. That creates problems, as I'm sure they knew it would...
The ACA doesn't offer any plans. Insurance companies offer plans. And your state legislature has a huge hand in setting the minimums, so don't forget to pass some blame to them. if you're complaining.
The vast majority of those "catastrophic" plans really were junk insurance. Many, many health issues that could be potentially very costly were not covered, and often there were caps in the fine print that would leave people stranded anyway in most truly catastrophic situations. Not saying your plan was like that, but many were.
Nobody ever claimed that identical plans would be cheaper through the exchange than through an employer. Why would it? The premise (however flawed at it's core, it seems to be something we have a hard time getting away from in the US) is still that most people should get insurance through employers and the economies of scale still apply when companies bargain for coverage for their employees. The point of the ACA is that those who do not get insurance through employment should have some way to get insured, despite pre-existing conditions and/or limited financial means. It's not perfect by any stretch of the word, but it has made progress. To think that healthcare would suddenly get cheaper for every single American is incredibly naive and no administration official has ever claimed that it would.
In this high tech driven economy, if I went out and bought the same computer that I bought for $500 ten years ago, I would now pay $50.
Moreover if I bought an up to date computer in the same range ( eg average desktop computer then vs average desktop computer now ), you would pay less.
So why are MRI machines, a solely high tech device more expensive?
Republicans would say that the free market should take care of it, but fact is that there will never be a free market in MRI machines.
Democrats would say that it is the fault of the evil MRI makers. Well yes there is something to that. The companies charge as much as they can, but the key word is can. As a society we've done very little with the "can" part. Desktop computer makers are finding that they can't charge as much they once could, but MRI makers do.
Obamacare does all these things about shuffle cost around and ineptly hiding things, and there are some cost cutting measures. But less then 5% of Obamacare worries about cutting the cost of MRI machines, drugs, bandages etc.
That's why it was doomed to failure. It's the PHB approach to fixing the medical care problem.
Have you ever read your sig? Based on your post, you're in the stupid category.
He's got a family. He wants insurance for him and them. He's a consultant so he can work part time and spend more time with his family.
But being a good reflexive liberal, you go full retard.
How on earth will a doctor find a tumor in my ear for $50? With that money, they could at most spend 20 minutes with me and probably only about 10 with the rest for reporting the findings to a computer. With so much to cover in a human, they could only find the tumor if a said that I think there is something in my ear... and if I was suspecting something then I would go see a doctor anyway?
Now, I agree with the point you were making: yearly check-ups are worth it. But I find the example pretty hard to swallow.
I'm a med student, and I don't understand why any young/middle aged male with no health concerns would have yearly checkups. The ob/gyns have the females over a barrel because they won't write an updated annual rx for OCP unless they come in.
But, go ahead and have your checkup if it makes you feel better. More money for your primary care physician.
The defenders of this law are guilty of more spin than the Iraqi Information Minister some years back.
I would be a card carry conservative if the party wasn't ruled by anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-democratic tendencies. Projection is the net result of this. At least the Democrats have the good sense to be ashamed of the liberal moonbat fringe. I'm yet to meet a conservative who actually knows something about the ACA that they didn't learn in the echo-chamber. But of course, it's the other guy pushing propaganda. And that is the madness that stops us from actually solving our problems.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
$6K/year is about right for real health insurance.
No, that's ridiculously expensive since you're asking young healthy people to pay that. What you MEANT is that that number is about right for the most deceitful system funding mechanism ever devised. Young, healthy people don't need health insurance, and adding them to the system does nothing to increase the system's costs. Therefore their insurance cost should be quite low... $600/yr or something like that.
What you had previously was "junk insurance" - them paying for and covering the bare minimum.
They were at liberty to offer that insurance as I was at liberty to buy it. Stop calling legal products 'junk'. It's not for you to say.
If you were diagnosed with leukemia, your HSA would have been wiped out in the first week and your insurance company would have dropped you as soon as it could legally get away with it.
Insurers can do that now. Any provable aberration in your application NOW is still grounds for cancellation. Bother to make a point.
[T]hey'd do ANYTHING they could to retroactively decide you lied on your insurance application and they didn't have to do anything.
It's still contractually illegal to lie on an insurance application or otherwise misrepresent in any way. And it's still grounds for cancellation.
If the GOP has plans to fix problems in the ACA, then they should produce a bill. But alas, we get obstruct-obstruct-obstruct. Fiddling with portions of the law is just a practical consideration because congress cannot do its job. But I'm sure you know best, even though you have no constructive contribution to the problem with probability 1.0, almost surely.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
How high is "insanely high"?
For a family with two 40 year-old non-smokers and two children under 21, making the median household income of $50,054/year, the average annual silver plan premium, nation-wide would be $9700/year. That's a lot, but not unreasonable given what a silver plan covers. But here's the kicker: Uncle Sam cuts your taxes to the tune 65% of your premium, so effectively you only pay $3373/year. If you were getting anything close to silver plan coverage for much less than $281/month, I'd be very surprised. You can do this calculation for yourself at http://kff.org/interactive/sub... if you like. If you have a reasonably profitable consultancy, the prospect of paying $9/day to insure four people shouldn't be that daunting.
But some small businesses don't generate much income at first, and the tax breaks in Obamacare don't help you because you aren't paying much federal income tax yet. That's what the Obamacare Medcaid expansion is for. It covers *all* your health care expenses if you make 138% of the poverty line or less. Unfortunately about half of the states have opted not to expand Medicaid, even though the expansion woulds be entirely funded by the federal government. If you live and work in one of these states and make less than 138% of the poverty line, you need to get coverage at work or you're screwed. Even a bronze plan, at $249/month, is more than people who are supposed to be covered by Medicaid expansion can pay. Blocking Medicaid expansion at the state level is a key tactic in ensuring that working people experience Obamacare as ruinously expensive.
Finally, it's important to remember that Obamacare doesn't set insurance premiums. What you pay *for* is regulated, but the *amount* you pay for it is determined by the market. Increases in premiums, or too-good-to-be-true plans that are dropped, result from outlawing practices like dropping you from your insurance when you get sick, or raising the premiums so much when you get sick that you're forced to drop your coverage. So the increased premiums under ACA are simply the market price for insurance that actually works the way people expect it to (i.e., when you get sick, it pays for care until you are no longer sick).
If you are one of those people who pre-ACA had awesome health insurance for your entire family below $100/month, your old insurance was almost certainly too good to be true. Insurance companies dropped those policies when the ACA outlawed the deceptive practices that made them profitable.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problem doing that would have been the people who didn't get compensated to go get health care. I'm sure most employers of low-wage workers would look at it as a nice, little reduction in operating costs. I guess the ACA could've mandated paying out to employees so they could go get their own insurance, but that'd be a huge administrative headache for the whole country.
It might work after the ACA and the marketplace have had a few years to get the kinks worked out.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Unfortunately, most people have no idea how much their healthcare actually costs, and when they find out they are overwhelmed.
You used the term "healthcare", but you seem to be talking about "health insurance", as most employers don't pay for healthcare; they pay for insurance.
It's not like it's hard to figure out the costs. Every company I have ever worked for periodically sends a letter to employees telling them all about all the hidden costs the company bears. I have a company-subsidized health insurance plan. My contribution towards the premium is about $350/month. My company's contribution is about $600/month, making the total premium around $950/month.
The "Covered California" policy offering the closest coverage to the plan I currently have, costs over $1800/month. And by the way, "closest" isn't very close; the deductible, co-insurance, and co-pay are all significantly higher. On top of that, the doctor my wife and I have been seeing for the past 12 years doesn't belong to any of the ACA marketplace plans. I discussed this with him a month ago during my annual physical, and he told me that the reimbursement rates for the ACA plans were set at 60% of Medicare rates, making it a money-losing proposition. This is one of the reasons there aren't very many doctors and hospitals participating.
The biggest problem is that once people have to pay for "routine" visits, they don't go on routine visits. Obviously you are one of those people who can afford to pay for a $200 doctor's visit out of pocket. Maybe half of Americans are in your category. The other half aren't.
Perhaps if they chose a Major Medical plan instead of an ObamaCare plan, they could use the $600 a month savings to put some money aside to go to the doctor once a year.
According to some handouts I got at a panel on Obamacare, the entire Obamacare premium for a family of 3 earning $78,000 would be $600 a month. So if they dropped Obamacare and got Major Medical instead, they wouldn't save $600 a month.
Major Medical is fine for people who are healthy and won't get sick. Any insurance is fine for people who are healthy and won't get sick.
The problem comes when people get sick. If you develop multiple sclerosis, your medical costs will go up enormously. You could easily spend $100,000 in the first year. You could be spending $500 and $1,000 on specialist visits.You could get a dozen MRI scans at $10,000 apiece. Your medical savings account won't cover it.
>> few hundred bucks a month for health care
You don't have a family with kids..who occasionally get sick and broken bones, do you?
I have a family with kids. Under ACA my cost for a silver level plan, after my tax credit, works out to $712/month. That's a lot: almost as much as we pay for food. But considering how much we use the doctor and even the hospital, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I have no problem saving and budgeting for that, especially if I can save my medical bucks in a pre-tax HSA. Why shouldn't everyone budget routine medical needs (dr visits, routine meds) into their monthly budget just like other necessities such as utilities, food and gas?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I found the opposite to be true. When I had my high deductible account and paid myself, I told the Doctors that, and they often knocked money off the bill.
I paid for an MRI I had and when I told them I was paying for it, they said, OH wait...and knocked off 15% off the bill.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I have kept my family self-insured for years because I contracted, kicked off and sold start-ups. With a pre-existing condition (PTSD, and also the most horrible, needing Zyrtec for allergies) made getting self insurance pretty darn difficult even on plans that exempted mental health. Yes, I heard "we don't cover mental health, but underwriting has declined coverage because of your PTSD."
Fast forward to now: My family of four was PPO insured for $296 a month, $10,000 oop max $5,000 oop individual max, 20% co-pay, free kids' preventive care. It didn't cover maternity (I'm snipped dag-nammit) nor pediatric dental, but in all other aspects exceeded the ACA "Bronze" level plan.
But it was a direct plan. Insurance (CareFirst/BCBS) company cancels group.
Replacement: $690 was the lowest cost plan at the "Bronze" level PPO, which gives us $13900 oop max, $7000 oop individual max, 25 or 30% copay, no included kids' preventive care or immunizations, it rolls in with everything else. We do get maternity. And I get to pay for kids' dental TWICE, since dental insurance is either a family package or per individual.
So basically I get to pay almost $5000 per year more for less. My aggregate income tax rate where I live now 39%. Some places in Canada (okay, Alberta) are the same. California is much higher, with tax loads surpassing that of Germany.
So why should I bother kicking off another start-up here, or keep the ones I have running where they are?
I now pay the same, still get bills for medical services rendered six months ago stamped "overdue" from 4 different providers for a single doctor's visit, and get to sort the mess out all on my own. The ACA threw most self-insured people under the bus - "but hey, no pre-existing conditions anymore, so you get to pay the same as a smoker twice your age with asthma!"
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
Well, if those people are that fucking stupid, then that's their problem, is it not?
I mean, what's next, if people don't want to save for food, and they start to starve, that's my problem too?
What happened to personal responsibility, and suffering the consequences of your actions (good or bad)?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Except that it isn't a few hundred $ a month. I went online to discover what it would cost me to replace my current employer's plan with an "equivalent" Covered CA plan, The cost was almost $19k a year or $1500 a month. My company sends a yearly statement regarding the value of my benefits. They priced it at $18k. The year before, it was 11k. BTW, my very large company had been conducting clandestine layoffs at the highest levels. I'm pretty sure they can thank Obamacare for that gift.
Insurance isn't why I don't run a start-up, the reason is because I have no interest in running a business. I don't want to be management either. I'm a technical guy, I want to just do technical things. As long as I'm getting paid well and get to do what I want then I have no motivation to make things harder on myself by trying to be my own boss.
Well, people have to pay for transportation to get to work, fi they don't, they don't work. That's my problem too? I mean, if they don't try to take responsibility for themselves and their health, that's their problem. People need to save for what they need, rather than sacrifice health and buy 60" televisions.
What happened to people taking responsibility for their lives and answering to the consequences of their actions/inactions?
Where in the US constitution is it mandated that I be my brothers keeper....by force?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm still searching the US Constitution where it says that the feds can force me to be my brothers keeper by force.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It just sucks that I have to work someplace to get paid vacation.
If the government provided me with a paid vacation I could choose to create my own business or something.
Oh wait, they already do.
America, what a country!!!
> Sure it means that I end up paying a lot more than I otherwise would
You do pay more explicit taxes in a country with universal single-payer healthcare.
However, here we sneak by paying little for as long as we're healthy and don't get hit with a catastrophic medical event, which is when we get the tab for the inefficiencies in our system (such as low income and indigent patients waiting until they're on death's door to stagger into an overcrowded emergency room with something that would have been better prevented earlier).
Overall, on a per capita basis, in the US we pay about twice as much as the next most expensive country for our "system".
BTW, as to why we don't have single-payer, see the excellent, if depressing article by Luke Mitchell
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/12/understanding-obamacare/
Ok, they suffer the consequences of their actions.
Those consequences result in them having major operations that could have been prevented.
End of story right? Nope, they just racked up a bill that you're helping to pay off through insurance.. and to what tune? To the tune of the next 10 years of their regular check-ups and maintenance in 1 go.
So which do you want? Higher premiums or regular maintenance?
Ounce of prevention, pound of cure. It's not just a saying. You're going to be paying for my pound of cure baby... rock on! Best part is, I got my beer too.
In all 50 states, two person businesses are able to get guaranteed issued health insurance. In many of the remainder states one person businesses can obtain guaranteed issue health insurance.
Not quite. One of the key requirements of any free market is *perfect* information. There's no requirement that information be free in any way. Admittedly, it's generally improbable for information to be perfect and unfree--hence the discord of closed source software and security, among other things.
No, I'm not familiary with "Medicaid oversampling" and Google doesn't really help there. As for pushing my provider to publish its prices, you make it sound like if I somehow got more information out of my health care provider I'd suddenly be able to get prices more in line with their own price estimates per insurer. Well, no, as another major point of the free market is a recognition that oligarchies and monopolies may be a natural consequence in a market place and as such they'll set their own prices which may fall out of an optimal* supply/demand point. As insurance is basically a large financial instrument where the more in the pool the lower per-user rates, it's rather obvious that insurance falls into the scope of natural monopoly/oligarchy. So beyond all the lack of free transition available to buyers, there's simply no means for natural healthy competition--even if cross-state insurance was allowed.
*Okay, that's a rub of the free market. If you're in a desert and there's one well with one owner and a million people about to die, yet no one has the asking price for a drop of water, then the "optimal" solution in a free market would be for everyone but the owner to die of dehydration. Hence, optimal in a free market and actually optimal for society or people in general may be very different things. And since we're having this discussion, I presume you are no more happy with the "optimal" solution that the free market tends towards in health insurance. No doubt, government interference may make the situation worse in many ways, but no government interference would have similar but different problems. Hence, either the whole system reasonable needs abolished or much better regulation needs established. Neither of which I see actually happening, especially as it's unclear how you can well regulate private health insurance when the wealth gap pushes people into free medicaid (admittedly, more often just the emergency room kind).
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
I'm still searching the US Constitution where it says that the feds can force me to be my brothers keeper by force.
Your right of course, constitutionally, socialized medicare should be a state program. Although the constitution has 27 amendments, and another one for civilized health health care would certainly get my vote.
But that's beside the point. Surely your argument with respect to socialized healthcare isn't REALLY predicated on the fact that the program is managed from the wrong level of government?
Were it local-governor-care instead, would that really make you substantially happier? How so?
The government can and they should just set across the board prices for medical procedures in line with the medicare prices.
If they were to do that, then it would become an issue trying to get certain procedures done because doctors won't find it worth the effort. This is already happening even with insurance company contracted rates. I ran into this issue trying to get shots for my kids so they could go to school. My insurance covered the shots, but the doctors don't feel that the contracted rate is worth the money so they simply won't do them.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Then you probably have no clue whatsoever.
Actually, I pay the health insurance for more than 20 people. I know more about health insurance costs than you do, unless you happen to be a health insurance salesperson.
I don't respond to AC's.
I already signed up and paid for my ACA policy, and love what it does for me.
But I recognize the challenge for people with families. They've been subsidized by corporations at the expense of childless couples and single people for years.
I think a better fix would be for people like me to pay $50 more per month so policies for people with kids would be less. We want to encourage people to have children.
I wouldn't count on that subsidy from corporations continuing-- my last corporations had cut benefits every year of the last seven years AND rates for children and spouses had increased for at least the last three years.
In my case; the ACA has allowed me to retire and start several small businesses instead of working another 16 years (despite not needing the money) because of my preexisting conditions. Since I don't think it's likely I would have been able to find employment with insurance all the way- an uncovered period was probably in my future.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The Nazis??
Nah, it was President Roosevelt who put in place the Wage and Price Controls that got us on the employer-provided health insurance bandwagon.
And even if I were inclined to blame the enemy for what was a purely internal issue, I'd blame the Japs - they were the ones who attacked us officially*.
*: While it is true that the proximate cause of our entry into WW2 was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Germans were the first to actually attack the US Navy, sinking the USS Reuben James a month or so before Pearl Harbor. But we let that slide, because we weren't ready for a war just then, and it was low enough profile that we could safely pretend it wasn't an act of war.
Just as we pretended that using the US Navy to protect convoys to a belligerent wasn't an act of war, in and of itself.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
As the cofounder of a Bay Area tech startup, I will say that compared with corporate taxes (and California has some very high corporate taxes) healthcare costs are very steep. I'm not yet at the cutoff point where I will have to start supplying my workers with healthcare, but I will say I now have better and more affordable options than I did last year.
Privatized MRI means way more machines that we need, my city has a dozen of the things; to the point where they have to advertize on TV trying to bring in customers. That drives up the price considerably. Plus MRI machines waste a lot of Helium; probably more than party balloons - the tech itself is horribly expensive! I know an MRI operator and it costs 10s of thousands of dollars every time they dump coolant- the shutdown and startup costs are crazy.
The cost of the MRI machine and it's operation don't matter; the profit margins will be the same either way and a competing market adds advertizing overhead, profit overhead, additional facilities overhead, additional staff and management overhead. Clearly tech like MRI can't be efficiently managed in the free market and it's religious dogma and greed that defends it...
The ACA isn't really about fixing medical care it addressed some of the insurance issues; the cost savings will be temporary.
Employer indentured servitude NEEDS TO END. It started to attract labor in the 1940s but it became a double edged sword, either trapping employees or the overhead cost of those shackles becoming a bargaining chip or a theft (cutting it after breaking past deals etc.)
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Aren't you a lucky duck.
The second cheapest plan my family could purchase (on or off the exchange) is a $640 bronze POS plan (yes, it calls itself a POS) that has a nice budget friendly $11,000 family deductible.
Obamacare has been a flat out DISASTER for my family. Of course, it makes sense that we have more coverage. When you have everyone pay for maternity coverage, everyone pay for mental health and substance abuse coverage and give out free well visits and routine exams of course costs are going to go up. It doesn't matter if you want (or need) that coverage.
My family is now paying for coverage we don't want or need and will have to pay out of pocket $11k (in addition to almost $8k in premium) before our "insurance" kicks in. This must be one of those crap plans Obama and the Democrats talk about.
Does the threat of violence oppress you from strolling to work nude? Do you pay for groceries under the specter of a gun? Is violence the only thing that keeps you from running your sewage line into a creek that passes through your property?
You live in a sad world. I live in a society.
Cheap storage VM.
So you support forcing people at gun point with the threat of prison to give money to lazy people that refuse to work? I want a new car. How about I stick a gun in your face and make you buy me one? That is what you and your kind are supporting. How about instead we all work to pay for the things we want? That is the only thing that is right. Any system where you steal from people at gun point to give to the lazy is morally wrong.
My silver plan was $373 from BCBS of texas and the drug copay is much lower and my annual deductible is $1500.
It's better than my old corporate plan. And now I can get my drugs from local pharmacies again instead of Medco.
Medco was pretty bad. I would occasionally get bottles with 1 or 2 less pills (never 1 or 2 more). And they sent a lot of mail- if you didnt' read every single one; you might miss a rules procedure and that would cost you 10-15 days of pills while things got straightened out.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Life isnt fair. Its not the job of the government to make life fair. Where are you getting that idea from?
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Do you pay for groceries under the specter of a gun?
The grocer is mortal enemy to a starving, penniless man.
They compared to other states where costs are going up because those states allowed health care plans that covered nothing but hangnails and scraped knees.
And if all the coverage you wanted was for hangnails and scraped knees, then why should you be forced to buy coverage for things you don't want, and in many cases will never need? Why can't you keep your existing plan if you were happy with it?
Shouldn't what a plan covers be driven by what the consumer wants, not on what the state tells the consumer he must buy?
I'm in Oregon, we've had progressive health insurance stuff for a long time. Costs are still going up, if you can actually get through the process of signing up. People have lost their insurance and their co-pays are much higher. This is a good thing. Right?
Don't forget the roughly 25% pre-tax subsidy for employer provided insurance.
If they gave the same tax deductions to individuals- it would lower premiums by your highest marginal tax rate. For most people about 20%. For the wealthy by 39.6%.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I didn't say life was fair, I said we gave, you took. Time for us to take some now. If you don't like it, like you said, life's not fair.
Oh, wait, life's not fair when your on top, when someone else benefits, it's whine and cheese time.
Cheap storage VM.
btw, I find the irony in your sig amusing, "ethical infants" is a good description of the ACA haters.
Cheap storage VM.
I'm still searching the US Constitution where it says that the feds can force me to be my brothers keeper by force.
Interstate commerce. 'Cuz the Supreme Kangaroo Kourt says everything counts as interstate commerce.
The cost of insurance before "ObamaCare" was also "Insane" so quit blaming the high prices on the ACA. If anything, since the ACA was passed, the annual rate of insurance increases has slowed dramatically. The very fact that you can get a private health plan with no restrictions for pre-existing conditions - which most of us have in some form -- should be a cause for appreciation.
The long term effect will likely be that people in small business and small 1 person companies will indeed carry private individual plans. I like the prospect of not being tied to a job because of health insurance. I also like the prospect of not having to work 2 or more jobs just to be able to get it.
Then you're kind of an idiot. Insurance rates, even for cut-rate plans, have been increasing in price steadily over the past two decades... with the exception of FY12 & FY13, where the percentage increase dropped by the largest chunk ever over that time period. To be perfectly clear, the facts are counter to your anecdotal example; i.e.: you are wrong, whether intentionally, or as a result of ignorance.
I call BS on that... The ACA benefits are the same for all policies whether in the exchange or not. They are the minimum ALL policies must have. And about complaining about stuff you'll never use, you don't really understand how insurance works insurance do you?
As for me, I've signed up, paid for it and am receiving benefits from it. I had gone for 2 years without and could not get insurance back because of pre-existing conditions. Now, thanks to the ACA, I have it and I have services and deductibles comparable to what I had before plus the new ACA benefits. And the policy cost is about $120 LESS per month than what I was paying before . And there is the exchange subsidy on top of that.
If hospitals are making such profits on overcharging patients and insurers, why aren't insurers taking an ownership interest in hospitals so that they can see some of these profits?
I said he needs to call the GOP and inform him of them of his story -- since so many of the ones they post turn out to be utter bullshit, I'm sure they'll be all over his story, which I can only presume is not utter bullshit. Why would you get the impression that I consider his story to be utter bullshit after suggesting that he follow up with the political party most in need of not-utter-bullshit stories concerning the ACA? Do you have some reason to believe that GGP's post is utter bullshit?
So you support forcing people at gun point with the threat of prison
I pay my taxes voluntarily, and would do so even if there wasn't 'the threat of prison'. Its the price of living in civilized society.
Its not 'theft at gun point' and characterizing it as that is laughably ignorant.
Fellow Canadian here. I'm fairly ignorant on all of the health care stuffs as I seem to have been blessed (so far) with decent health and no major accidents or injuries requiring expensive treatments. I'm a 35 y.o. male with no dependents or pre-existing conditions and a non-smoker. My health care costs show up as a $26 line item on my bi-weekly paychecks. What the fucking fuck America?
do not read this line twice.
And if all the coverage you wanted was for hangnails and scraped knees, then why should you be forced to buy coverage for things you don't want, and in many cases will never need?
Because you usually don't pick and choose what injuries and illnesses you get. We've already decided as a society that we're not just going to let people die in the street and that medical personnel have to treat patients. So you're going to get treatment, the ACA ensures that you have actual coverage for it rather than freeloading.
It's still a totally broken system though; no way should health care have ever been tied to employment. For one thing, doing so masked the actual costs of health care and insurance from the average person.
then why should you be forced to buy coverage for things you don't want
Because one day you will want them and show up in the emergency room demanding them
, and in many cases will never need?
Yes, i know, you are indestructible and will never get cancer. If you are lucky, then you turn 40 and you realize that is just a load of crap and you will need them. If you are unlucky, you get run hit by a bus tomorrow and you realize, again, that you actually do need them.
Please describe in equal detail the "plan" you had before. Don't lie.
Can you please post the reason the insurance was cancelled? What part of Obamacare regulations did it not fulfill?
This whole discussion is full of shills on every side. I believe insurance was cancelled, but every time somebody says it was they do not say the reason. This leads everybody else to say "well it probably only covered hangnails", which is certainly false. But I am also suspicious that in all these Slashdot postings saying "Obama took away my insurance" I have NEVER seen the reason an insurance was cancelled, except for one post that said "my employer refused to pay the cadillac tax" which is not something likely to be mentioned on Fox News.
I believe there are screwups all around. Some of the regulations the left wing forced into Obamacare are probably silly and excessive and causing unhelpful cancellations, but there is a distinct refusal to post exactly what is wrong.
What happened to people taking responsibility for their lives and answering to the consequences of their actions/inactions?
It failed.
Personal responsibility doesn't work in health care. Rich people get care. Poor people die.
People who are poor don't have the same choices you do.
They're not buying 60" televisions. They're not buying lattes in Starbucks. They don't have relatives to fall back on for money. They can't buy insurance. They can barely afford transportation to work. Sometimes they can't afford transportation at all.
Where in the US constitution is it mandated that I be my brothers keeper....by force?
Insurance is supposed to be there for EMERGENCIES, not to run you $10 copay for routine Dr. visits.
If I understand correctly, the reasoning for insurance paying for routine GP visits is this: it's more cost-effective for someone to visit their GP early, have a problem identified and fixed, than it is for them to wait for it to develop into an expensive critical condition. However, if they have insurance, then it's more cost-effective for *them*, individually, to let it develop into an expensive condition which their insurance will pay for. So the insurance subsidies the routine GP visits, to encourage insurees to take care of problems early.
Any relation to Dr. Mala Trivedi?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Your existing plan really does not cover contraceptives? That will actually make it *more* expensive, not less.
I can get a platinum plan with no deductible and $10 dr visits and $2000 out of pocket maximum for $419 a month. I am a 45 year old male living in Florida.
A plan that is equivalent to what my employer pays now ($290 a month) is...an equivalent amount through ACA.
So your $800 a month of a piece of shit plan sounds like pure bullshit to me, or you need to move away from podunk, dumbassvile
I agree this also happened to me when I went to an out-of-network doctor (I had reasonable health insurance at that time). He immediatly knocked a great deal off the bill because he knew the insurance company would not do it.
The problem is that people who don't pay for routine medical care don't die. Instead they get *major* medical care and thus cost the system a lot more. You car example would match more if what happened if a person refused to go to work because the transportation cost too much then the work would be forced to charter a helicopter for them.
Because, you could have more of a say in how your state enacts or doesn't enact it.
If you didn't like that state's solution, you could move to one that more closely shares your views on life and how much they want to make you pay for someone else's life.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I guess you aren't driving by the same projects I am, seeing said 60" TVs through the open doors of the apartments, while they're sitting on the porch.
And as for the rest of it...hey, life is tough.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
But see, that's why conservatives want to get rid of Obamacare and sex ed and make contraceptives and abortion illegal. That way, we'll have more and more children born to mothers without insurance who don't want them, meaning larger and larger tax writeoffs for hospitals, meaning less federal revenue. And in the meantime, we can cut taxes, too, but let's get rid of the child tax credit so we don't have to give the parents of those unwanted children any more money. That'll starve the government so they're forced to drastically cut spending, costing millions of jobs of public sector workers and contractors, because they are lazy, inefficient, and in general, the enemy, and then we can cut unemployment benefits and social programs to harm them even further.
Dear Troll modder or conservative who agrees with him:
Disregarding the trollish bit at the end, explain how this post deviates from the modern GOP's vision for America.
Because, you could have more of a say in how your state enacts or doesn't enact it.
That depends entirely on the state, and your views relative to the predominant view of the state.
If you didn't like that state's solution, you could move
If that's considered a valid option, their are plenty of other countries to choose from.
On the flip side, it being a federal program means there aren't as many douche moves available to corporations to play the states off each other; triggering interstate commerce conflicts, and leading to federal intervention anyway.
Where in the US constitution is it mandated that I be my brothers keeper....by force?
We mandate lots of things that aren't in the US constitution.
As Adam Smith said, when you benefit from a society, you have an obligation to pay the costs of running that society.
Adam Smith knew about epidemics. We have to cooperate to build hospitals that care for everyone as a last resort. It would be nice if everybody contributed those costs voluntarily.
But they don't. Some people become freeloaders. They know we're going to have to take care of them whether they pay their share or not, so they don't pay. A few freeloaders can encourage everybody to stop cooperating. Then we won't have hospitals for anybody. So if the freeloaders don't pay, we have to make them pay.
If you had a 4-year-old child who got cancer, whose life could only be saved by a $100,000 drug, you'd be demanding that the government, or somebody, give your child that drug. http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
So we have to make you pay your share now of the cost of running society. You don't have any choice.
....and that mortgage interest deduction. Goddamn homeowning freeloaders.
....and you're expecting a small consultancy to be insanely profitable? I have made a profit, but not at levels which allow unbudgeted expenses on an ongoing basis.
I guess you aren't driving by the same projects I am, seeing said 60" TVs through the open doors of the apartments, while they're sitting on the porch.
You don't know that they're poor. There are a lot of middle-class projects, where people have good jobs and pay market-rate rents.
There was a sociologist named Elliott Liebow who answered the question he was always getting, "Why don't these negroes get jobs instead of hanging out on street corners all the time?" His answer was, most of them do have jobs. The negroes you see hanging out of the street corners during the day have jobs in the evening (and weekends). If you go to a restaurant in the evening, you need a cook there in the evening, right?
+1
I wish I had mod points...
OK, buy me a new car or I'll get the thugs in blue to beat and arrest you and destroy your property and kill your dog. That is what you are demanding. You statist Republicans are all the same. You hate authority except when you want to use it to take from minorities and the poor. We are the ones paying for your healthcare scam. It's classist and racist at the extreme.
OK, buy me a new car or I'll get the thugs in blue to beat and arrest you and destroy your property and kill your dog.
Comparing health care to a new car is as laughably ignorant and idiotic as comparing taxes to armed theft.
If you don't get a new car, you can take the bus, or walk. Or find work closer to home, or find a home closer to work, or both. My brother is married with kids and doesn't have a car. Why should anyone buy you one?
But health? If you don't have that, what are your options? How is health anything remotely like a new car?
You hate authority except when you want to use it to take from minorities and the poor
I'm not sure how socialized healthcare is somehow a 'take' from minorities and the poor. I look forward to seeing how your clearly addled brains connects those dots.
There are lots of political problems that could be fixed without repealing the ACA. 99% of it is removing greed, the #1 killer in America.
Indeed. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to legislate greed away. If we could do that then a lot of problems in America could be solved pretty much over night. Of course, not every solution should require action by the legislatures or the courts. It would be nice if we could all, somehow, agree to abide by the golden rule without it having to be spelled out by the force of law.
Any system where you steal from people at gun point to give to the lazy is morally wrong.
You can express your outrage in prison all you want, once we shove your ass in there for not paying your taxes. I'm sure you'll find many grateful listeners there who will be very receptive to your libertarian ideas.
What state? I live in WI, an a plan for my family of four would be $900/m for much, much better coverage than that. People around here Complain about the cost, but when you ask questions, most of them are comparing it to their current out of pocket and have no idea how much their employers pay.
I live in Oregon too and none of what you describe is how the ACA has affected me. And I'm self-employed. Since ACA has come along, this is the first time in about a decade where the monthly cost of my health insurance was flat or decreasing. Coincidence? I think not.
It's because of this.
I used to have a true catastrophic plan. $300/mo for $5000 deductible. Plan doesn't exist anymore nor could it ever again. Preventative health was not covered.
You're right! While we're at it, I want my car insurance to cover just the basic mailbox and ditch disaster. I refuse to pay for catastrophic protection because it'll never happen to me!
I call bullshit. You had a "full-time consultancy" but couldn't afford a few hundred bucks a month for health care? Right.
I priced a plan out for my family and it was about $1000/mo. Fortunately, my wife still has a legacy plan from her work for about $300/mo. Not sure what will do when her plan becomes illegal, though.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Ramrodded through the 1990s Republican plan, in fact. Because the 2010 Republicans would rather die than work with Democrats, even if it means repudiating their own ideas.
ObamaCare is not something that the GOP wants, nor is it something that the GOP ever wanted. If it were something that the GOP wanted, it would have been implemented when George W. Bush was president.
ObamaCare was based loosely on a Heritage paper that was released as an alternative to HillaryCare, not as a Conservative policy goal. Ever notice how the only people calling ObamaCare a Republican plan are Democrats?
The old health care paradigm was broken. It was based on the idea that the majority of people went to work for a single employer and stayed there for life, so that they didn't have to deal with the "pre-existing condition" gotcha.
Apparently you missed the whole HIPAA thing? You could jump employers all you wanted and not worry about preexisting conditions as long as you maintained continuous coverage. I think you might have been allowed to have a short gap, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
It assumed that employment was more or less continuous, instead of months, and even years between jobs when something medically crucial might happen but no employer was there to provide insurance.
That's what SSDI+Medicare is for. If you become so disabled that you can't work, you get SSDI. If you're on SSDI for a period of time (I think it's a year or something), then you qualify for Medicare. It's not like sick people get kicked to the curb if they don't have a job.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Not really, it's a man-only plan so it didn't cover a single pregnancy either, until the government forced him to come along and pay money to an insurance company that might use a buck of it on a pregnant woman.
When he gets sick he plans to lay down in a gutter and starve to death, it's the only Republican-approved way to go with dignity.
We don't get kicked to the curb we just get forced into bankruptcy.
Yeah how it was was great for the uninsured, you know 22k bills for 2 days in the hospital. Pretty expensive stay when the only test I had done was a cardiac stress test and all I got was a referral to a cadiologist I could never see. You see I don't qualify for Medicaid and now I am truly fucked as that was just one visit.
I much rather would prefer Universal Health Care.
It could be paid for by a combination of tax sources, such as payroll taxes, a new separate earmarked income tax, etc.
I feel we need to cut so-called "defense" spending, which could certainly help in part fund other things.
Prescription drug patent reform is a must, otherwise it will still be too expensive.
And when I say UHC, I don't necessarily mean there wouldn't be coinsurance and copays. I would have it paid to the government at tax time, with a 7% to 10% cap on one's taxable income. For the poor, little to no taxable income means little to no worry. So, if someone racks up $8k in coinsurance/copays, and their taxable income is $30k, then $3k is the most they'd pay. (To be clear, you don't pay it to the doctor, clinic, etc. The government pays in full, and you pay the government at tax time.)
For a clinic, doctor, etc. to accept payment from the UHC plan, they'd have to be accredited. By accredited I mean no more than let's say 15% (or something like that) of revenue can be used for "administrative" purposes.
If a clinical or hospital is heavily for-profit, we could always recoup some of the revenue by way of taxation anyways.
I would have certain procedures covered nationally as is now. I would allow states to create additional requirements too, provided they provide at least half the funding in order to cover them.
Also, dealing with student debt is another thing. Would doctor salaries be lower if we didn't have students going into debt while going to medical school? Something should be done.
I'm tired. Please forgive the typos I'm sure I made above.
Pure partisan FUD.
Allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. There's one. There are many more.
You say there aren't any Republican ideas. You just don't listen to them because it preserves your little world view.
"previously uninsured people being forced to become customers"
I thought the point of ACA was suppose to be to lower costs so that previously uninsured people could now afford insurance, not to force people to buy something.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Trust me on this one, I am VERY familiar with the projects here in New Orleans.
These I'm speak of, have NO middle class occupants, they'd be scared stiff to live in these places.
That being said, thankfully, post Katrina, we're slowly tearing these down...making some into mixed income areas, but it takes time to flush these bastions of poverty cycle and crime generators out of our city after being here for so long.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You should be free to fuck up, but also free to suffer the extreme consequences for it too.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's only fair. It's not like fairness and consideration for others is a cornerstone of a functioning society or anything.
And "do unto others as was done unto you" is not a very good argument for continuing a practice.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
I don't trust you. I trust the doctors who know their patients better than you do. And I trust researchers who have actually talked to poor people in the projects and gone over their budgets, better than I trust you.
I've been to New Orleans. It's one of the least segregated parts of the formerly Confederate south, and it's still pretty segregated. You reduced the black population to slavery and post-slavery servitude, and you complain when they don't show personal initiative.
As George Bernard Shaw said, "The American makes the negro his bootblack, and then demonstrates his inferiority by pointing out that he is a bootblack."
(I may be wrong about the "formerly.")
Lol and yours, taking the path of minimal effort. Sounds like laziness to me.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
While life isn't fair, our legal and ethical system does have a element of fairness designed into it. That's what i was referencing. "Do unto others..." seems to be the motto of those who clawed their way to a comfortable living with the ability to afford healthcare, I'm the one advocating change here.
Cheap storage VM.
The elimination of caps was done several years ago, so there was no lifetime cap on my Major Medical policy.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
According to some handouts I got at a panel on Obamacare, the entire Obamacare premium for a family of 3 earning $78,000 would be $600 a month. So if they dropped Obamacare and got Major Medical instead, they wouldn't save $600 a month
Major Medical is fine for people who are healthy and won't get sick. Any insurance is fine for people who are healthy and won't get sick.
The problem comes when people get sick. If you develop multiple sclerosis, your medical costs will go up enormously. You could easily spend $100,000 in the first year. You could be spending $500 and $1,000 on specialist visits.You could get a dozen MRI scans at $10,000 apiece. Your medical savings account won't cover it..
Even if you did get sick and used your entire deductible on a Major mediical plan, your maximum out of pocket would still be cheaper than just the premiums on a typical health plan, and that is before all of the copays, coinsurance and deductibles which are also included on a typical health plan.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Indeed, how can you argue with people who say they'd prefer it if mothers died in childbirth or children died of cancer to having to pay a couple of dollars a month? It goes a little beyond selfishness.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Picking what things you need cover for? Sounds like a great fun game to play against your insurance company, you're bound to win against all those trained actuaries.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Ethical systems are not generally based on fairness, but justice. Some don't even go that far. Utilitarianism is a good example; if throwing someone off a cliff is best for society then it is ethically permissible, but most certainly not fair.
Justice, in most philosophies, has an element of fairness to it, but not in the broad definition "Eye for an Eye" mentality. IE, you hit me in the face with a brick, so its only fair I do the same to you. Fairness in justice usually applies to simply fair application of the law to everyone. Some, like John Rawls, take that further and apply fairness to societal conditions, status, wealth etc, but that is a fairly new interpretation of justice. Oddly enough, its also based on social contract theory, where self interest is the highest motivator.
I personally side on the theory of fairness in Justice only as it applies to the application of the law. This is because in practice, fairness in broader sense (wealth distribution, status) tends to lead to a more utilitarian society, which I vehemently appose.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Glad you do. Stay there.
In America, it's wildy unconstitutional, despite the SCOTUS unconstitutionally modifying legislation, to claim it is a tax, and then calling is constitutional despite having originated in the Senate.
If your neighbor is in need, help them. That's not the job of the federal government.
Okay, so you used to have health insurance while paying $X. That got canceled (you don't say why, could be plenty of reasons), and your insurance company offered one for $2X. You found one costing $1.2X but it was a worse plan than what your insurance company offered for $2X.
This is not an argument against the ACA.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Apparently your home business isn't just "moderately successful", or you'd want a plan that would kick in before the hospital bills hit $200K. Not that there's anything whatsoever wrong with running a very successful business, but it means your experience is not typical. (I've also known people who suddenly needed really expensive drugs, so you really should have at least high-end drug coverage.)
I'd also like to know what your insurance situation is. In paragraph 2, you're paying $200/month for a plan that covers very little; in paragraph 3 you have a plan through an employer. It's presumably a nice plan, so it would be interesting to know what it costs, including both your contribution and your employer's contribution. It would also be interesting to know whether you chose a plan that included every detail your work plan did (similar to how Apple hardware is reasonably priced when you consider all the additional details most /.ers don't care about), or something roughly comparable.
So, really, I'm not all that impressed by somebody who can't figure out what sort of insurance he has, or make a meaningful comparison, and I am not all that moved by the experience of somebody who can just swallow a $180K emergency.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The ACA happened because some of us really want health care reform, and this was all Obama could push through. (I thought an Illinois politician would be better at ramming legislation through.) By at least establishing a nationwide insurance pool, it's an improvement.
BTW, a family plan for $210/month with a $1200 deductible must have a good many common things not covered, and is likely to be useless in a real emergency. If nothing else, the insurance company will cancel the plan if anybody gets seriously ill, and then refuse to sell you a new one that will cover the now-pre-existing condition. There's simply no other way the insurance company can make the numbers work on that. There apparently are lots of those plans out there.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Okay, you were paying about $490/month ($5880/year) for health care overall, and it turns out you can get a really good one for $100/month more because of the ACA, or one for $3K/year ($250/month) that wouldn't kick in until you'd exhausted a typical year's HSA contribution. I'm not seeing what the big deal is. Pay $100/month more for comprehensive coverage, or $10/month more for what is fairly similar coverage.
As far as prenatal coverage goes, you, as an old man, have a different set of expected medical expenses than a young woman. For example, your chance of heart disease is considerably greater, but you're not charged for that. Your premiums are greater because they cover prenatal coverage, and less because you're not paying your fair share of heart disease coverage. I don't know if it balances out or not, but insurance is basically spreading risk, and you'll always be paying for stuff you don't use.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Because one day you will want them and show up in the emergency room demanding them
And if I want to self-insure for those things you know I will want, but somehow I know I will never need, I should be allowed to do so. No, I will NEVER show up in an emergency room demanding coverage for maternity benefits.
Your attempt at painting everyone else with the same brush you apply to yourself is exactly what is wrong with the system.
Yes, i know, you are indestructible and will never get cancer.
You must have had very sad life where the only disease you've ever seen is cancer. "In many cases". All the words have meaning.
If you are lucky, then you turn 40 and you realize that is just a load of crap and you will need them.
Fascinating. You think at 40 I'm going to grow a pair of ovaries and a womb and start having babies, so I'll need maternity and pre-natal care?
If you are unlucky, you get run hit by a bus tomorrow and you realize, again, that you actually do need them.
Why yes, getting hit by a bus does, in so many cases, cause full grown men to develop ovaries ...
Fascinating. You think at 40 I'm going to grow a pair of ovaries and a womb and start having babies, so I'll need maternity and pre-natal care?
No, I thought that by 40 you would be married and your wife might need pre-natal care, but now that I see you are such an asshole I stand corrected. You will never marry and even if you did you wouldn't care about your wife, so you are indeed correct. You will never need such coverage.
The government has the Constitutional power to tax and spend for the General Welfare. I realize this is a broader role than many /.ers think should be in the Constitution, but that's what it is.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So you're going to get treatment, the ACA ensures that you have actual coverage for it rather than freeloading.
The only freeloaders are those who don't pay the bill when they get treatment. Plenty of them around, but not all. Second, the cost of paying upfront or with cash for services is about a third of what is charged to the insurance. Why? Because they already know how much the insurance will pay and charge every penny of it regardless of actual cost. I don't fault them for that, it is the way the system is set up. They wind up eating some costs and making bank on the other. In the end it all comes out in the wash. The real issue with the ACA is that it is unconstitutional. It is the government playing nanny and telling people that they are too stupid to take care of themselves and that they will do it for them. It is also designed to fail. They know very well that they will never get enough healthy people into the system to make it work and thus when the short falls begin and people cannot afford it after the subsidy ends then they will say that the government has to take over insurance. It is a gateway to the single payer system that they could not get through not just a by-partisan congress, but their own super majority. In 3-5 years, the government will be deciding who gets what treatment.
Knowledge is Power The Power to Heal The Power to Harm The Burden of Choice
What level of plan was it? Was it a gold plan? How much was the deductible on the new versus old plan? How much money do you / your family make? Did you check whether you would qualify for the subsidy. Your complaints are worthless without backing them up with more information.
Americans, Join the world with good affordable medicare
My wife's friend is an example of government medicare. He has a condition that she needs to take an injection once a week for artery blockage to the head (brain). It is worth $30k per year.
Two weeks ago, she felt ill, went to the emergency, and they discovered that her intestines had split just above the colon. She was operated on, and the problem has been corrected by cutting out the defective length of intestine. Then, she had a bag placed on her abdomon to bypass the colon and to let the wound heal. In the meantime she is being fed boost, a intravenus feeding.
While recovering, she developed pneumonia, (too much lying in bed), has breathing tubes, and a machine that assists in her breathing. That machine senses a breath and forces air in.
Since then, she has had a trachia tube to help with recovery. That was yesterday.
Today, she is feeling better, infection is almost cleared from the abdomon and intestines, and it also marks two weeks of hospitalisation. The pneumonia is subsiding, and by next week the trachia tube will be removed.
For 10 days she was on life support. And she will come out of it ok.
The estimate is that in the USA, that treatment would not be covered by most insurers, and she would have been left to die. Are we wrong to think so? the total cost, if this treatment was done in the USA would be close to a half million dollars.
USA, time to appreciate affordable care act. If you don't join, you are a fool.
As well, as more citizens join, there will be competition amongst insurers for your enrolment. Prices will come DOWN.
There is a huge difference between disability insurance and health insurance that I think people fail to understand. Disability insurance is fairly cheap and is what protects against long term sickness where you can no longer perform your job. Healthcare just pays bills. If you have proper disability insurance you can continue to pay your healthcare insurance.
I pay $2000 a year for a good disability insurance policy (where they can't "choose" a similar career for you should you become unable to work) and qualify for no subsidies on my own healthcare (I own a business so needed to create a group for my employees and myself). My family's health care premium is now $2100/month. It is up from $1040/month in 2009 when they started "helping". I also pay $2100/month for each employee's family. Before Obamacare I simply paid my employees an extra $20,000 so they could purchase their own health care (or not, not really my business). Soon they will tax our "cadillac" plans to the tune of $14000/year for being "too good". I'm sorry, this is far too much for insurance (remember, nobody is actually sick and I am the oldest member of the group by 8 years at 40). Before I was married and had a familiy, I had a catastrophic policy ($200/month). I self insured for the rest and spent under $100 in 10 years (from age 20-29) on "healthcare" costs. The money I saved paid off most of my student loan, provided a downpayment on my first house and a car.
Younger people today and being denied this ability so they can pay rates comparable to if they were actually sick. If they really wanted to help and decouple health insurance from employment and reduce costs they could have just allowed people to expense $20000/year if they use it for healthcare otherwise forfeit the benefit and address tort reform somewhere in the 10,000 page law. Instead they provided the perfect incentive for older experienced doctors to retire.
The ACA sucks. It appears to me that it sucks less than the system we had. Moreover, the ACA is a step in the right direction, in that it aims at universal care.
As far as government-run programs go, there's a whole lot of them out there that give much better public health numbers than our, um, "system".
As far as affording universal health care, literally every country with universal health care pays a lot less on health care per capita. Last I looked, Germany was the next most expensive, with per capita costs two-thirds of what we've got here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A few hundred? Try $800/month which is the cheapest plan the ACA offers where I live. And that plan was total garbage, didn't cover half of what you'd expect and had huge co-pays.
I've heard this so many times, and seen it debunked so many times, that it's just ridiculous. Sorry, but unsupported anecdotal data isn't really convincing, especially since so many people have been wrong about it.
The problem with ACA is that it MANDATED HMO's... Not health insurance.
I don't know what odd definition of "HMO" you're using (I suspect you're using it simply because HMOs are unpopular), but that's just not true.
If I tried to get the plan I have with my employer through the ACA exchange it would be over $1600/month. That's insane! And yes, I actually looked it up.
Again with the anecdotes. Also, I notice you didn't say anything about which plan it was, or how much your employer was paying.
First: 240/mo is pretty close to 3K/yr so the premiums are about the same. 3K deductible seems pretty high, but in the individual market is probably fairly normal. You might note that there are certain things (annual wellness visit, etc) that are covered even before the deductible is met.
As for "Why not remove so many of the minimums...(...I don't need prenatal coverage)" The answer is: The exchanges are an attempt to bring the benefits of group rating as enjoyed by employer sponsored insurance to the individual market. Those benefits include preexisting condition coverage and overall lower premiums. The cost of those benefits is that everyone in the group gets the same coverage. So, while you, personally, may not need prenatal coverage, people in your group that are helping to keep your insurance rates more stable and (hopefully) lower than they otherwise would be will need that coverage. Likewise, coverage of contraception keeps rates lower because pregnancy is expensive.
Now, are there going to be people for whom the new system is worse than the old one? Sure. And if you're one of them it kind of sucks. But the expectation is that the people who are harmed will have enough options to be able to deal with that harm while those who are being helped did not have any options without the implementation of this law.
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JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
Yes. Cross-subsidization (also known as "socialism") has resulted in most people I have spoken to paying 40% to 60% more on their premiums, with a higher deductible.
That's not what socialism is, that's insurance.
It has also resulted in fewer young people with insurance, because their premiums went way up. It's DUMB to raise rates on the demographic that (A) is essential to funding the program, and (B) needs it the least.
Are you entirely forgetting about the mandate? Where do you get that fewer young people have insurance? That, like the other anecdotes about huge cost increases, sounds entirely made up.
boo hoo the poor doctor won't be able to afford mazeradis and bentleys anymore since their pay is going down. they've over charged for years. fuck them.
The elimination of caps was done years ago as part of the ACA. As was frivolous cancellations, for things like filling out an application wrong. Of course they didn't notice your app was wrong until they were "almost" on the hook for a ton of money, tough luck for you.
So, you support the ACA?
Cheap storage VM.
Why is it relevant? I'd imagine most times people don't give a reason because they were not given a reason by their employer/insurer. Whether their employer dropped it because their costs went up, or their insurer dropped it because it didn't meet the "minimum required services", or some other reason indirect reason, the plan got canceled. Why are you hung up on the reason? Or are you trying to say it's mere coincidence that all these plans are being dropped immediately after all these new regs went into effect?
You're joking, right? You just stated what is wrong in the first half of that sentence, and then are asking why people don't post what is wrong in the second half? And people have been very clear about all the other things wrong with as well: no cost controls (gives everyone insurance + added healthcare while ignoring the cost of healthcare), subsidies hide the true cost from the public while socking the middle class in the stomach, adds expenses for the young invincibles (who typically don't have much money), seriously raises costs for businesses (which trickle down into employees), completely fails to account for self-employed individuals, etc, etc. You seriously must be deaf if you haven't heard the issues outlined quite thoroughly.
"That's not what socialism is, that's insurance."
NO. Insurance is a fund YOU pay into, and if some particular disaster you are insured against occurs, they pay you. That's a contract between you and your insurance company, and the payouts are determined (by law) to be based on the probability of that disaster or accident occurring.
However, when you are forced to pay for someone else's insurance, a rates-based-on-probabilty scheme is no longer possible. Instead it becomes nothing more than de facto socialized medicine. The very foundation of what insurance is, according to both the commonly accepted and legal definitions of "insurance", no longer applies. Even more so when you force acceptance of pre-existing conditions. It isn't possible to "insure" against pre-existing conditions! That's not insurance, again by the very definition of what insurance is. It's socialized medicine.
"Are you entirely forgetting about the mandate? Where do you get that fewer young people have insurance? That, like the other anecdotes about huge cost increases, sounds entirely made up."
I'm not "forgetting" about anything. It's a fact you can look up. More and more young people are foregoing insurance altogether, because it's cheaper for them to pay for their own minor health issues and the fine at the end of the year, than to pay the new inflated rates. For the very reason I mentioned above: the rates are no longer tied to THEIR probability of disease or accident, but instead they are forced to pay for other people as well.
Not only is it a fact you can look up, it is a fact that anybody with a brain should have expected to happen, for the reasons I already mentioned.
By the way... I am one of those people. I have zero intention to sign up for Obamacare. And most young people I know are saying the same, if it isn't 100% paid by their employer.
Pardon me. For the sake of accuracy, I will amend the third sentence above. It should have read:
"... the rates are required by law to be based on the probability of that disaster occurring to you, and the cost of treatment."
And even that should probably say "were required" rather than "are required", because since Obamacare was passed, insurance isn't really insurance anymore.
Umm, no, ACA is very "anti-market" -- ACA forces people to engage with the healthcare system through very specific channels (insurance) and then mandates minimum levels of healthcare for insurance plans. That's the "market" equivalent of forcing everyone to share the cost of each other's car insurance costs and then upgrading everyone to BMW luxury cars. Unsurprisingly enough, the "market" in that situation would behave in the exact same fashion: very large hikes in premiums, no change in the cost of a BMW luxury car. ACA fails because it eliminates market options (namely cheap plans that are truly catastrophic "insurance") -- it replaces them with mandated Cadillac plans that are incredibly expensive.
Wrong. The price of HDHP HSA insurance was affordable, and practical for many. Those plans are now regulated out of existence. "Insurance" is such a misnomer now, it's actually comical.
"traditional" employment? as opposed to what? Just asking.
gosgog:
Sad, I was flying tours in Hawaii making $90 - $125. a flying day (yeah I flew damn near every day cause Hawaii aint cheap!). ended up triple bypass, covered by Insurance, afterwards given offer to keep insurance for $600. a month (single coverage & no further for any Heart problems) ! Adios Hawaii, back to the mainland. Working for small company (no health coverage) & big outfits with coverage wouldn't talk to me. So shopped...Ha! Ha! We will try and get you coverage probably $2000.+ and no coverage for any former ailment.
Why the U.S. has never adopted the Canadian or Swedish type Coverage I have no Idea. Not only the that when you finally reach retirement & go SSI Medicare...try and find a Doc who wants Medicare or Medicaid patience....by then I had decided, thru' SSI back then, to go to one of the two private outfits they authorized, cost me an extra $50. a month back then, but worth it! (that was the early 90's.
Retired overseas...just cancelled Med part B, no good here.
The only freeloaders are those who don't pay the bill when they get treatment
The vast, vast, vast majority of people in this country (including a chunk of the upper 1%, I'll wager) do not have the money to pay for a serious condition, especially if it requires life-long treatment.
The real issue with the ACA is that it is unconstitutional
Until there is a change in the Supreme Court and they rule that it is unconstitutional, then it is constitutional. There is no higher voice in the land for determining the constitutionality of a law.
If I have to deal with Citizen's United and David Souter's fucked up Kelo vs New London being constitutional, then you have to deal with the Affordable Care Act being constitutional.
I smell a troll. Whew, the stink!
Yep. definitley a troll.
I was part of a team of people that suggested HC plans that did not require turning insurers into Federally controlled utility companies. Some of the features we worked out were interstate portability, a homologated minimal support plan, FDA reform, medical liability reform that made sense and included BIg Pharma, and a new specialty of medical advisers who could navigate the treatment options in complex cases.
What did we get?
If you are in the middle class and you buy a new policy you will be paying more for the premium, even after reimbursements. Probably much more. However, with annual deductibles in the range of $3000 to $6500, all you really have is major medical insurance. It will be a genetically unlucky few who mange to collect anything over the deductible.
"Minimums are needed because cross subsidisation is rather integral to having affordable healthcare for everyone. Meaning those who are in the stage of their life that don't need much medical care pay more, but those that do are able to afford it."
In other words, you believe in redistribution of wealth. Maybe you don't understand that insurance is supposed to pool risks, not redistribute premiums.
Come on you young Obama zombinoids now go out and buy coverage just like Obama told you to. We need your dollars to cover us older folks. How the hell am I going to get cheap care if you twits don't buy ACA. You voted for him now show your solidarity. Spend you money. Support the Dark Doofus! Millions of us oldies are counting on you.
The big benefit of Obamacare is that it limits your (pemium+copayments) to ~$8,000.
There's something badly wrong with Obamacare if it took them 2000+ pages of written law to create a program whose primary benefit is something that you managed to express in a single sentence.
Or perhaps we just have too many legal professionals involved in the law making process, without any oversight (from outside the legal profession) over the ethical conflicts of interest involved in creating overly complex laws.
The legal ethics problem alone should be enough to torpedo the entire program, given that the right to ethical practice of law can certainly be asserted under the 9th Amendment. If the federal government has some legitimate role in health care, presumably that role can be expressed by a law that is written in 20 pages or less, and readily comprehensible to any educated member of the public.
In short, if you support Obamacare you're supporting unethical practice of law.
ACA forces people to engage with the healthcare system through very specific channels (insurance) when they cannot pay for emergency care out of pocket. Crazy shit! Anti-market! Because we can readily have a "market" when buyers don't (because they can't) pay for things they never-the-less receive. Unless you're arguing that we do away with emergency room care for everyone, nothing about the ACA adds to the supply side of things except so far as there's likely to be a shift of people from the emergency room to the doctor's office; but, then, that's most likely to cause a reduction in price.
On the demand supply of things, everyone is a "BMW luxury car" unless you really think rich people, poor people, young people, old people, etc have fundamentally different bodies. That was true before ACA and it stays the same. Cadillac plans, btw, are the ones where people don't have to pay many out-of-pocket expenses and I can personally attest to the point that nothing about the ACA magically erases those except in a few trite ways. Though I guess in your mind the ACA really does eliminate those "market options" of "should I get really sick from the flu to the point I need to see a doctor" or "should I stay healthy, not get really sick, and avoid needing medical care". Or was it the idea that hospitals and doctors used to run specials of "have a heart attack take, 50% off your first quadruple bypass"?
The best part to your little rant is that while you have a small point that any government involvement of the sort involves *some* market elimination, that obviously there's a much bigger insurance market if many more people are buying insurance. Add to it the government subsidizes and it's a real sweet deal for insurance companies on that end. That they have to actually *pay* for care and not wipe it under the table by denying claims, yes it must suck for them. Or that insurance companies can no longer charge 5x the rate for an individual must really cut on those "market options" for individuals who clearly like the idea of getting no better coverage for much higher rates.
But, yes, let's also hear your little diatribe about the evils of car insurance while you're at it, which you basically ran on. Because fuck knows there's no competition in that space. I must be imagining all those commercials. Meanwhile, that there are government standards should mean that Bob's Unfinanced Car Insurance Shack can't enter the market is such a major loss that we should ignore that by setting minimal standards a lot more people actually drive because they don't have to worry upfront about the risk of catastrophic medical costs if they hit someone--not to mention the risk of being hit by someone who didn't or won't keep that sort of cashing in savings.
The only real capper to your statement would be if you were to suggest we expunge all the fraud and murder laws which are obviously very "anti-market". Because fuck knows that a government providing some sort of minimal standards for a society would not in any way provide the basis for a stable market even if it incurs its own costs. It's all zero sum and hence all government can do is shrink a market.
Thanks for the lesson!
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
http://www.foxbusiness.com/per...
Please describe in detail your first sexual encounter. That has about as much relevance to my post as anything else. It really doesn't matter what I had as part of a private business transaction.
What matters now is the choices I have due to government force.
I'd rather my car insurance not cover oil changes and tire rotations. I don't mind paying for catastrophic care, which because of my age (over 30) the Affordable Care Act has made illegal.
That wasn't my statement. It forces ALL healthcare (including non-emergency care) through insurance. Secondly, your "emergency room" case argument is liberal talking point bullshit. 5% of less of our total healthcare bill is racked up in the emergency room. The VAST amount of healthcare expenses are known ahead of time. If 5% of our healthcare was handled through insurance, and 95% of it wasn't, that would be a functional system.
They in fact do. Some cram drugs into them. Some cram nicotine and cigaratte smoke into them. Some pollute their bodies with alcohol. Some spend multiple days a week in tanning beds. Some conduct themselves in dangerous activity like base jumping. Believe it or not, healthcare is not a one-size-fits-all level playing field. The only case where I wouldn't want people paying for their individual fuckups is something like autoimmune or genetics, when they literally have no choice in the matter. Most other times, it most likely had something to do with the way they lived their lives.
You're an idiot. If I never plan to have children, why does MY plan have to cover maternity care? There's one example for you. You seem hung up on emergency care, which is sad, since you're so off base it's not even funny.
why aren't insurers taking an ownership interest in hospitals so that they can see some of these profits [from excessively marked up procedures]?
perhaps it has to do with the legal restrictions on the investments insurance companies are allowed to hold.
If so, government is the cause of excessive health care costs.
Approximately $250 of your $3,000 MRI cost goes to the radiologist. The other $2750 goes to the hospital.
But what's the hospital's actual cost of doing an MRI, considering energy, other consumables, amortized value of the MRI machine, etc.?
My former point was that those who were not financially capable of covering medical costs had to buy insurance and that those unplanned expenses are why most people are required to buy insurance. Having said that, further research and you appear to be right. Emergency room care seems to be in the 2%-10% range. I should have stated emergency and urgent care--including things like heart surgery after a heart attack or expensive medication/surgery to treat cancer or other ailments after a diagnosis. Having said that, it does leave me to wonder about the other 90-98% of care. So, we have this:
"Of each dollar spent on health care in the United States, 31% goes to hospital care, 21% goes to physician/clinical services, 10% to pharmaceuticals, 4% to dental, 6% to nursing homes and 3% to home health care, 3% for other retail products, 3% for government public health activities, 7% to administrative costs, 7% to investment, and 6% to other professional services (physical therapists, optometrists, etc.)" -- from Wikipedia Cite Note 45, although the information wasn't readily visible in the first link
Given that ~50% of US spending on health care is Medicare/Medicaid and the other ~50% is private (insurance), it's rather hard to separate out that figure to get an idea of how much of that is "Cadillac" coverage of unnecessary treatment of the elderly/poor or what. In any case...
How much of it is genetics and how much of it is environmental? Should we go 50/50 until we get genetic tests done on those cancer drugs? And what about the fact that generally being old == getting cancer/having heart failure/having a stroke because eventually you "cram" enough bad stuff in your body even if you live a very healthy lifestyle. So, well, you seem to be for ending Medicare near entirely. That right there doesn't paint you very well. Beyond all that, I'm curious exactly how much money you've saved up personally for your inevitable heart attack and cancer. When are you going to have it and are you saving enough? Because if it's oh so predictable, it'll be nothing more difficult than saving up for one's child's college--which plenty of people don't do either.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
And you don't find this relevant to this discussion? Exactly where costs are coming from and why? Seems a hell of alot more important than just giving everyone insurance that pays for everything and just raising taxes to account for our out of control healthcare costs.
A very good question. Perhaps it calls for a study (rather than hands over eyes + dump cash into anybody's pocket that asks for medical care). It doesn't even have to be perfect accountability. At this point, I'd settle for any .
My HSA grows every year (and accrues interest). I fully well intend to have a buffer (+ insurance) for when misfortune strikes me.
So then they should end up paying for their mistake, or their children should be taken and given to someone more responsible to take care of.
Well you've finally come around. So aren't you then incensed that next to zero effort was put into healthcare cost control in Obama's healthcare bill?
I never painted all of it as such. In fact, I specifically called out cases that are not self-caused. However, some of it is damn well self-caused. Such as type 2 diabetes for instance. Which statistics show to be ~95% of diabetes cases. So that's at least $245 billion (http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-diabetes.html) that's highly likely to be self-caused. I could bring up numbers for lung/throat cancer and smoking as well. Heart disease is likely strongly linked to obesity as well. Don't pretend these studies have not been done. NONE of those people are accountable atm. If they're poor, they do as they damn well please, and the rest of us pick up the costs of their incredibly expensive lifetime vices.
And most of those cultures also have a far healthier culture: less fat people, more exercise, less job stress, generally better lifestyles. But of course, none of those factors are considered when healthcare costs are compared from nation to nation.
It's relevant to the discussion. Too bad that, AFAIK, there aren't any studies to spell out where costs are coming from and why. The quote I give only gives a "from" but in mostly esoteric terms that give virtually nothing on the real where and why. Now, if you could provide a study that actually broke down who was using the health care system and how, I'd love to see it. The closest I've seen is little snippets that are often an abuse of statistics.
You seem to be missing my point. There's already been fuck tons of studies done that show "this significantly increases your risk of cancer type X" where "significantly" just means that there is an actual effect and it's not merely a placebo effect and where "cancer type X" doesn't necessarily apply to any other type of cancer or condition. There are very few examples of any one thing causing one major condition that's preventable and therefore in scope of accountability.
That's a ludicrous statement, but thanks for saying it anyways. It's entirely why I asked. You "intend" to have the money "when" misfortune strikes. Yet by its very nature, you have no idea when misfortune will strike, whether multiple misfortunes will strike, or the scale of the cost. Or do you seriously contend that everyone should strive to have millions in savings just in case? Because anything less is unreasonable. Insurance is more of a risk pool precisely because of that and not merely for even "catastrophic" emergency because such a term because untenable very quickly on the cost of many medical procedures.
For the former, you can't get blood from a stone. For the latter, we already have a huge backlog of foster kids.
I would be if I actually thought any health care law passed in the US would do such a thing. Really, we're so well beyond the incensed point on how the system already works, you'd be hard pressed for me to become any more incensed Any real effort to fix the problem would involve either (a) public conversion of the health care system--leading to "death panels"--or (b) massive government regulation into the health care system--as if the current mess is really helping and further regulation is unlikely to be any better than Obamacare.
Yep, those are the major two ones I'll grant you.
Actually, it's most strongly linked to ag
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
That type of account was worthless because it practically covered nothing! There are HSA policies available in the exchange. Suck it up...
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"The sad thing is surgical interventions and medications are the foundation of modern cardiology and both are relatively ineffective compared to nutritional excellence. My patients routinely reverse their heart disease, and no longer have vulnerable plaque or high blood pressure, so they do not need medical care, hospitals or cardiologists anymore. The problem is that in the real world cardiac patients are not even informed that heart disease is predictably reversed with nutritional excellence. They are not given the opportunity to choose and just corralled into these surgical interventions.
Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Most of the studies I've seen have shown that everything is simply marked up insanely (and almost entirely arbitrarily): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
So more or less like this: http://www.southparkstudios.co...
And rather than doing something about it, like forcing competition or transparency in costs, we've just spread the enormous cost across paying taxpayers (very similar to Social Security and Medicare, which just absorb the massive costs, efficiency be damned).
That is entirely untrue. Scale matters. You're trying to pretend everything out there is a million dollar expense and it simply isn't. Maternity care, for instance, while expensive, is not a bankruptcy causing condition. And it's oft (80%: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs...) seen coming ahead of time. So why then is "insurance" mandated to cover it? Moreover, why are my premiums paying for it, a childless adult with no intention of having children? This is just one such example. There are others.
Except that's disingenuous. The definition of "poor" has slid significantly so far over the years to the point than you can have a home of your own, two cars, and a vacation or two a year -- AND STILL PAY NO TAXES (http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/29/pf/taxes/who-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes/). 12% of people who pay no taxes make between 50 and 100k a year. There's plenty of blood in that stone.
But wasn't that the whole point of the law? Yes we can and all that? Grandiose change was exactly what his whole administration was supposed to be about. In fact, ACA, even as written, is one of the most sweeping, drastic changes we've ever seen to our healthcare since Medicare. The only problem is that it's a huge negative change rather than a positive. It cemented us permanently into the existing system rather than attempting to reform it.
That's a terrible yardstick. All sicknesses get worse with age. Just because someone dies at 65+ doesn't mean the stuff they did between age 1 and age 64 didn't help get them there. Let's take two groups of people: The first is a bunch of generally fit athletic people who take care of themselves, the second is a group of fat slobs who don't exercise. On average, who develops heart disease and when? That's a relevant test.
You scoff, but the