I think you are confusing public health care with health insurance - they are NOT the same thing!
That’s an awesome HDCP. How much does it cost you a month? Most of them aren’t even close to that good in my experience. My wife was offered one at her place of employment (And she’s a veterinarian) that wasn’t nearly that good and cost over $400 a month. Is your family completely healthy?
You specifically might have an awesome HSA or HDCP, but they all aren’t awesome. Or, you might be mistaken about the numbers somehow, I don’t know. The one’s I’ve seen are terrible. Also, not everyone is happy or able to spend $10,000 plus your premiums per year for health care. Your plan might make sense for you because your family is healthy. That’s like saying the freedom and comfort of not wearing a life vest is better for you because your boat isn’t sinking.
You aren’t screwed the hardest. You will have better coverage when it is all said and done.
Are you off Cobra?
The law isn’t fully enacted yet. And it didn’t raise your rates. Your insurance company raised your rates.
Jesus, it’s worse than I thought. You changed insurance coverage and think finding a higher rate counts as your rates being changed? This is laughable. Please, you need to understand an issue before you bitch about it.
Are you serious? The mandate is what the insurance companies wanted. Seriously, just think about what you wrote and how utterly silly it is.
Think about it.
Also, will you please admit that your posting of the signs article was unfounded?
Completely clueless, not just a little clueless, 100%. You obviously have never priced insurance in any form. You are talking out your ass. My friends in the same unemployed situation were hit with a greater increase in their policies due to health risks.
:eek: $10,000?
Difficult to wrap my head around the concept of having that kind of money on hand.
Also, on the 100% coverage, does that mean that after spending $10K you NEVER spend another dollar out-of-pocket? Or do you have to spend another $10K next year too? 'Cos if you have to spend ten grand a year, that kind of undercuts the significance of “no lifetime maximum.”
Cobra is a complete ripoff. The difference in the cost of the policy exceeds the deductible of a personal policy. You’d know that if you actually priced out policies.
You truly don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about. I didn’t change policies, that’s how I know how much it went up.
You do know that buying coverage without an employer is more expensive, right?
And I’ll have you know that I understand the insurance market fine. I’ve been lucky enough to be born with asthma. I know about shitty and expensive insurance.
Look, it’s up to you to learn about the issues. But you and your friends aren’t data. We don’t know what you’re misunderstanding or what your friends are inflating or misreporting while they bitch.
Can we just deal with facts please?
Also, are you ready to admit that the sign link was unfounded?
It’s every year. But to some people that sounds awesome, because they’re self-reliant. Also, the cost is in addition to monthly premiums. So Monthly Premium + 1st 10,000 a year in expenses.
Personally I think paying more for less coverage is a bad thing, but to each his own.
It doesn’t mean you have that much money on hand, it means you could finance it if necessary. By raising the deductible it allows a person to bank the difference as a hedge against the risk. It’s all part of the budgeting process.
Cobra is a lifeline for a lot of people. The problem is it doesn’t cover your employer’s side of the health plan.
Your mistake here is you seem to be comparing a conventional health insurance plan for a high deductible catastrophic plan. The HDCP’s are terrible because they cost more. If you don’t end up needing health care they’re cheaper, but if you do, they can ruin you.
Then why are you using an insurance broker? I was confused by your statements because they are unfocused. Mah bad.
Also, are you willing to admit that the sign link was unfounded?
Yes, max your credit cards to pay for the overpriced shitty-high deductible plan.
Brilliant!
Also, are you willing to admit that the sign link was unfounded?
No it’s not, but that’s a different issue. What we’re talking about is the rise in cost of health insurance. I’m not talking about the difference between policies, I’m talking about rate changes within a policy. Apples to apples.
The issues are clear. The fact is anyone with a personal policy just saw it rise dramatically. The fact is that the new law will require people to buy insurance whether they want to or not and they will now pay higher premiums. The rate increase I got was damn close to my financial advisor’s predictions. It may be hard for you to understand that there are people who actually go through legislative mandates and calculate the costs involved.
The op link was spot on. I have no clue what “sign” link you’re talking about.
It is more expensive. Employer insurance is cheaper than a private policy because they can leverage their size. Then, most employers pay a portion of the policy for their employers. That you don’t believe this doesn’t matter.
Do you understand that requiring everyone to purchase insurance is something that will depress prices, right? How much has everyone’s premiums gone up? Specifics please.
I’m talking about the link where you posted an uninformed article about the street sign for a stimulus project, suggesting that it was a waste of money. But you didn’t seem to understand that buying signs also stimulates the economy. That appears to be a very basic deficit of knowledge.
We have an even better HDCP, offerered through work. The deductible is the minumum allowed by law to be considered an HDCP – about $2500, IIRC. After that the insurcance company pays 90% of everything until we’ve paid $4000 out of pocket. After that they pay 100%. There are never any copays at any point – not when paying the deductible, or at the 90% level.
The premium is about $300 per month.
I put the maximum allowed by law every year in to the HSA, so that usually covers any actual medical expenses I have.
That is not an argument for or against Health Care Reform (although I am generally in favor of it, for other reasons). Just wanted to point out there are pretty good HDCPs out there.
Some insurance companies kicked up premiums nearly 50 percent. That is for those who are self insured. I suppose you think their costs have gone up that fast . But I read it was in anticipation that they would be forced to spend 85 percent of the money they collect on delivering heath care. You know they don’t want to do that.
How is Obama responsible for health companies gouging customers? They have been doing it a long time.
Here is your argument:
Private health insurance rejects sick people, so government has to pick up the tab. The government just started a new program to insure sick people, however they are worried they will run out of funding and have to start turning people down for the new program. Ergo (subliminally this is the argument), government is bad and the private sector is good. Aren’t you supporters of the government ashamed or regretting this?
Basically that is like if I said the dictatorship in Sudan was killing people, and the UN was trying to set up refugee camps. However the UN doesn’t have enough money to set up enough refugee camps to cover everyone and has to start turning people away. Ergo (subliminally this is the argument), The UN is bad and Sudan is good. Aren’t you supporters of the UN ashamed or regretting this?
Am I regretting this? No. The government tries to correct for a massive failure in private industry and runs out of money. Does that make me support private industry more and public safety nets less? No. Why would it?
You are lucky you live in Canada and don’t have to pay twice as much for an abusive, wasteful health care system.
Back in 2007 I had private insurance, which I never used. They wanted to raise my rates 40% in a year, so I just dropped the policy. Health care costs went up about 5-6% across the board that year, but they wanted a 40% rate hike.
This was back when Obama was an unknown. But I’m sure that was his fault somehow.
Also the definition of ‘pre-existing condition’ is pretty loose. You can have extremely low medical costs and still be rejected due to pre-existing conditions.
Spending 5 billion a year divided among 200,000 enrollees works out to $25,000 a year in subsidies per enrollee. Add in premiums and it will come to $30,000-35,000 per enrollee per year. Not sure why that isn’t enough. I have applied for this program but will honestly likely spend more in premiums than I ever take out in expenses. I have ‘pre-existing conditions’ that cost almost nothing to treat or cover.
Again, to reiterate, the entire jist of this argument is that people who had no health care before because the private, unregulated industry told them to go fuck themselves are now being given a new option of a federal high risk pool. But the pool might not have enough funds to cover everyone who needs it.
Basically the private health insurance industry has screwed over so many people that the public system can’t scrape together enough money to fix the problem. Money that could go to covering people is spent on lawyers and administration.
I don’t understand the conservatives acting like this is a failure of the public system. In that link some were calling this a ‘death panel’. Again, it is like if Sudan was committing genocide and the UN wanted to set up refugee camps, but was running out of money so they had to turn people away from those subsidized UN refugee camps. If apologists for Sudan used that as a talking point to bash the UN and (subliminally) promote the government of Sudan, it wouldn’t work. At least it shouldn’t work.
“The system I support has fucked over so many people that not even the federal government can scrape the money together to fix the problem.” Is not a good libertarian argument.
PS: Medicare for all would save $300-400 billion a year in lower overhead and bulk purchases, more than enough to cover everyone and still spend less.
I’m paying less than the difference between cobra and a private policy plus deductible. That means I can pay my deductible and have money left over. My lifetime limits are higher than the cobra policy I left. But again, the discussion was about the rate increases. My agent went through every policy available and they all rose sharply.
The specifics are my policy is rising in anticipation of convering high risk groups. As Sateryn76 pointed out, it’s the people who took responsibility for their insurance who are taking the hit.
You C A N N O T be serious that it’s a productive use of tax funds to put up signs to denote that tax funds are being spent. Seriously, with that logic we should put up little signs next to the big signs describing the big sign. Repeat as needed until bankrupt or the planet is completely deforested.
You answered your own question. It went up in anticipation of the increased cost of carrying high risk clients. I’m paying for that now. Obama-care is raising the cost of my care, not lowering it.