So your Friendly Neighborhood President Trump made, via executive order, it possible for anyone to buy an association health plan. I am self-employed, living in Indiana, and I would definitely consider such a thing inasmuch as my Ambetter plan went from $500 a month to over $700 a month. Yeah. What a fucking joke. I’m a Liberal and think Obamacare was a great stride forward toward a meaningful healthcare system, but c’mon. I’ve had to change my plan every year because of shit like this. If the new tax plan goes forward and the individual mandate is eliminated, I will sincerely consider not buying health insurance at all at this rate.
Way back in the pre-PPACA days I worked in insurance. Several membership groups sponsored a health insurance plan so that those who joined the group could access group rates for health insurance. Small business trade groups were frequent sponsors, so a trade association for Locksmiths, Plumbers, or some other particular profession were likely sponsors of such plans. Some plans were pretty decent. Some not so great. As always, read the details.
These plans were largely shut down by the PPACA. Trump’s edict seems to be reopening that market. I suspect it will take until fall 2018 before such plans will actually be available again. It is too late in 2017 to organize such a thing.
I’m glad association health plans are legal again, there was no justification, at least no honest justification, for shutting those down. They provided good health insurance to their members that met PPACA standards, and the ones that didn’t wouldn’t have had to change much to get there.
But this concept that anyone can sign up whether or not they are in the association, that’s news to me. Is that accurate?
Some associations were clearly just fronts for providing a group health insurance plan and had little or no substance to the association itself. The mission statement would be something incredibly broad like “advocating an improved business environment for our members” or similar vague crap.
These tended to let anyone join and often the membership fee for the association was $20 per year or less. And yes, take anyone who will pony up the money to join. But you had to join the association to buy the insurance. No way around that.
This made me think of a Track and Field club or maybe several of this kind of running club forming an association to obtain Healthcare.
In order to be in one of the clubs in the association, one had to have a resting heart rate no higher than 55 BPM, be able to run a sub 7 minute mile, a BMI no higher than 20 and be able to do 50 “perfect” push ups.
Imagine how low the insurance premiums could be for people in this kind of physical condition. Sure all people have accidents and injuries and some of these people may even get sick sometimes, so there still is a little risk for the Health Insurance company, but nothing like the general population as a whole.
But I think this is why some people oppose these kinds of Health Care associations. Let’s face it, Health Insurance costs are only made reasonable when healthy people who seldom see a doctor subsidize unhealthy people who have to go to the doctor all the time.
That’s true, and that’s the unspoken reason why they got rid of these plans in ACA. Thing is, the public was never consulted on such a change, so IMO the change is invalid. The actual, spoken reason for PPACA was to make affordable health insurance available to all, AND that no one’s current insurance arrangements would be screwed with. That spoken promise, made again and again and again, should be honored.
The ONLY reason people would lose their insurance under ACA was if the plans did not mean standards. Further, that’s what water carriers right here on SDMB said again and again about the law during the furor over cancelled health insurance plans. “Obama didn’t cancel those plans, the insurance companies did!” or “Those were shitty plans!” But with these association plans, the plans were very good, and the law actually required those plans to be cancelled despite being good health care plans. So there was a lot of dishonesty and deception around this issue and it’s good that the Trump administration is finally doing something right.
