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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 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Sadly, I think we're stuck with obamacare, and it won't be repealed, but it needs to seriously be altered.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.........
>> 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?
It is the same problem as in poor parts of Africa too. People don't WANT to be helped.
If you look in the areas that are against that kind of healthcare, its often poor people in the south, and the ones that are for it are frequently upper middle class in rich cities.
I'm in Boston. Pretty much everyone is for universal healthcare. No one (in my circles) would benefit from it. We all have pretty much perfect company funded healthcare with little to no deductibles, often with premiums paid by our employer, which let us go to one of the best hospital in the world (MGH) for pretty much no money. If they were to get the money from it from taxes, the same people would be disproportionately affected by them (already in upper tax brackets, at the bottom end of the groups affected by AMT....it hurts)
Yet these same people who would get NO BENEFIT from it, and would lose a lot of money in the process, are in favor of it. And those who'd get the free lunch are against.
Now, don't get me wrong. In its current implementation they have a point sometimes: poor people who aren't poor enough to get subsidies and now have to pay premiums are getting hit hard by them, especially if they see themselves invincible and haven't seen an hospital bill in their life. But that wouldn't be an issue if it was fully funded healthcare, not just the bastardized in between that we currently have.
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
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.........
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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 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.
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?
Congratuations, you've just found out what the Republicans felt was the best system for healthcare. If the Democrats had had there way, it would be single payer - not "how much profit can we make" insurance companies.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
So we're shifting the tax burden off of the businesses - are you then in favor of higher property taxes? A larger income tax? Maybe you'd like to cut programs to help poor people? Is there any evidence that shows lower taxes make the economy stronger or the country better?
Now which regulations are we going to get rid of? Typically the government adds regulations in response to abuse of the system. Maybe we should let companies pollute the rivers as long as they promise not to do it too much? How about lower the safety requirements as long as not many people get chewed up by machinery. Or maybe just let people discriminate against the handicapped.
But yeah, let's worry about getting people health care because it was working perfectly before Obama came along and ruined it for everyone.
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..........)
"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.
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.