I’m also not thrilled with the group because according to the SourceWatch page linked above, they go so far as to “oppose single payer health care and is pushing instead the Obama plan,” which I don’t agree with. (I agree ObamaCare is better than the status quo and anything else that has a chance to actually pass at this time but not at the expense of single payer).
Their methodology:
So why not just use the CBO findings, an organization that has already said that the ACA would reduce the deficit? Because they say that premiums are coming in lower than the CBO anticipated.
So is this a good report based on sound methodology? Or biased nonsense?
Smoke and mirrors. the high deductibles (up to $12,000/year for a family of 4) will ensure that many people will never be reimbursed. this is most of the “savings”. Effectively, the ACA makes care Un-affordable.
In MO I’m not seeing anything like $12k deductible. The Bronze plans are more like $4500 with maximum OOP of ~$6k. Where are you seeing $12k deductibles?
ETA: OK, now I see $12k as an out-of-network deductible for a deductible-only plan. But why would you go out-of-network on a PPO?
What’s good is that if you really want to see that specific doctor for that rare disease out-of-network, there’s at least an option to. Without health insurance you probably wouldn’t even be let in the door.
The report is actually reporting good news…for the government. The costs of the subsidy of plans is cheaper than expected because the total cost of the plans is cheaper than expected. The subsidized consumer sees no difference.
To illustrate this, look at a 27 year old making $25,000 a year. A plan cost after subsidy in the silver level is $147. That person still pays that $147. If the unsubsidized plan cost was anticipated to be $500 but is now $425, the government saves 15%. Those savings aren’t passed onto consumers directly.
As to whether it’ll go to the deficit, Congress’ historical appetite for money they can spend tells me that anything they don’t have to contribute to the deficit they won’t. But it will cost the government less.
I would note that the reviews I’ve seen have concentrated on the population centers. The rural areas of America seem to be left out of the cost savings.
Did you visit your parents in Tweedledee, Montana and break an arm while helping them move stuff to the trash from the attic? Your plan has a national network and not a local network right? No? $7,500 is now due. No discount or plan payment reductions from your insurance company because that ER isn’t in your network.
-or-
You just got stabbed and an ambulance took you to the ER. While writhing in pain, did you ask the ambulance to skip the closest hospital because it isn’t on your network? No? That’ll be $7,500. No discount or plan payment reductions from your insurance company because that ER isn’t in your network.
Some news reports are saying of the cheaper plans have far stricter network options that a lot of people who had insurance historically aren’t used to.
He is also lucky that MO has that option. In some places, you pay 100% if that specialist is out of network.
That is more class warfare against corporations and the 1 percent. They will be impoverished by not having this $190 billion to “trickle” down on the rest of us and it will be an economic disaster!
Both great examples, and ones that the currently uninsured also have to deal with. I guess the question is whether having a high out-of-pocket deductible is preferable to paying full price - which probably comes down to risk tolerances and premium levels (which, at least in my state seem to be reasonable even without subsidy).
The fact that the ACA has altered the dynamics of the healthcare market so substantially that most insurers are not giving people the option to keep their current plan.
The problem I see is that you are paying (if we take my previous 27 year old ACA example) $147 a month…to only get to pay for your medical bills directly and without discount anyway. To me, that’s sorta the opposite of “affordable health care”.
And it would ruin both the traditional uninsured and the new Insured-Lite classes. There really isn’t a difference between the two except a large imposed fee every month for insurance that isn’t really all that desirable. And also makes it, unfortunately, harder to pay for those situations that are one-offs. It doesn’t help that most of these same plans have $2,000 to $6,000 annual deductibles for in-network services (depending on where you live and plan selection), so even if you did hit an in-network ER in my above examples, you are still out $1,500-$2,000 for each of my above ER possibilities.
The ACA doesn’t give you a lick of help if you aren’t making good money, sadly, except in cases where you find out you have something like cancer or another long-term disease. But you will still have to pay your deductible every single year, which is still a burden for people already struggling.
Wow, that’s really a really horrible thing! I had no idea that “most” insurers were cancelling people’s plans! You certainly wouldn’t make such an outrageous, bullshit-sounding factoid without a cite, would you?
I know there are a lot of insurance plans that sucked donkey balls that are no longer considered insurance. I had one of those when I was just starting out working for myself. I took a part time job just to have some access to employer-subsidized insurance. Piss-poor coverage that barely broke even when using it to its hilt.
We buy ours on the open market now (hooray for building a client base!). Just got word that our insurance company is going to be holding rates the same for the second year in a row, and last year we even got a rebate check.
I know some employers are cutting salaries under the cover of the Right Wing Spin that it’s Obamacare that’s forcing their hand. I know there must be some, but I haven’t heard too many stories of those companies turning what was the employer contribution back over to the employee. Funny how insurance used to be considered part of a compensation package but has now been spun into some sort of generosity that was crushed by ACA. No, we’re not giving you a pay cut, the government is!
It’s also too bad the Republicans rat-fucked the development and implementation of Obamacare so it isn’t nearly as good as it could have been. Imagine if their primary goal was making the system as good as possible rather than making Obama a one-term president.
Here’s a cite. I don’t know that it qualifies as “most insurers,” but these are large companies and we’re talking large numbers – hundreds of thousands of customers per state, 60-80% of the company’s individually insured customers for the numbers cited.
It appears that their old plans are being cancelled and replaced with new, more expensive ACA-compliant plans. This understandably has people upset considering they were told “you can keep your plan.” Apparently what Obama meant was “you can keep your insurance company, what they choose to do with you is another matter.”
But not all exchange participants are subsidized. Those who aren’t are going to pay less out of their pocket.
Screw that big sale at Macys. I’ll just spend the money I save elsewhere!
My PPO plan has an option (which I take) that is just like this - in-network treatment is very inexpensive, out of network treatment is expensive. It is UHC so nearly everyplace I want to go is in network, and there are provisions for emergencies which I’ve never used. It is a lot cheaper than the more flexible option. People are going to have to get used to it and choose what is right for them.
The Marketplace story on this yesterday noted that when Obama said that he was answering a question about employer plans. Those are not being cancelled.
It is indeed true that new and better plans are more expensive. What is different is that even people with pre-existing conditions can now shop for cheaper plans, and are not captive to your current company.
Assuming the article and the facts therein are true, the savings to the government come from premium increases on the middle to upper middle class who don’t qualify for subsidies and are paying higher premiums to help those with pre-existing conditions get coverage. From my (admittedly limited) observation, it saves the government money by passing the costs onto healthy middle class people.
It seems to be a recent trend that people making from $45k to $100k per year get crushed by increases in government regulation.
We’ve had many threads on insurance plans, and high deductible plans have often been suggested by those opposed to ACA and other government intervention as a solution. I totally agree with you about them - they would work best if everyone had bimodal medical costs, either nearly nothing or very high. If you are in the middle you get screwed. (It might be good for young people who are either going to be healthy or get into an accident or something.) At least now you have other options - and for those of us with pre-existing conditions you actually have some options.
As for the OP, I suspect we are not going to know for sure until next year when everyone has signed up. However the exchanges are introducing the free market and competition into the system. That has got to help. If you like Expedia you should like this - once it starts working better, of course.
Republicans remind me of little kids.
“The free market is delicious!”
“Glad you like it. Your brother likes it too.”
“Yuck! It is disgusting!”
If that’s true then OK. The AP fact checkers are siding with conservatives on this one, though.
True, but this is small consolation to people who are now trying to figure how to pay for these new, more expensive plans, while at the same time being told to “shop on the exchanges to find a cheaper plan” when the exchanges are still barely functional (if at all).
Most of the people who make enough money to be unsubsidized are going to have jobs with health care provided, though. They aren’t the targeted participants and certainly won’t be core participants in the exchanges.
I don’t mind saving money. But I take a grain of salt with people going “That savings will go right into lowering our deficit!”
It’s like you pulling out the $20 you saved at Macys and going “This is going straight to my credit card debt!” No one believes it. We all know it’s gone at the first frivolity you see that you want to partake in. (My apologies if your self control is greater than the vision I have drawn upon you.)
Yes, but how far-reaching is your network of PPO participants? My own participation block (non exchange coverage) is huge. I can go almost anywhere in the US and receive participating care. That’s very, very different than some of the cheapest plans having a single hospital in an area giving coverage.
Don’t forget, if you are poor or struggling to make ends meet, you don’t get a lot of options to pick and chose on this stuff. You are limited to bronze or maybe the cheapest silver plans to try and get coverage from. And those are the plans that suck like this. So you don’t go “Where are my coverage options? Well, this and that both look…” you go “Well, this one is $x and this one is $x-10 and…”
We could have passed all of the good pieces of ACA without forcing people to buy health care, the largest segment of which will find the costs beyond their means. I still think that the poor and healthy (And probably a not-insignificant portion of the poor and slightly unhealthy) will just not buy and take the way cheaper hit on their taxes (And even if costs don’t go up, the 2016 final fine is still half the cost of today’s 2nd Cheapest Silver plans) than bother with insurance. Especially if the HDHPs are still as atrocious as what we have been offered this year.
The Exchanges only offer a competition benefit, by the way, for people who can afford to shop. The people who cannot, even after the huge subsidies, are still relegated to what Obama called “underinsured” back when he was trying to sell this idea. The Bronze and some of the silvers are still “Underinsured.” The benefit will go primarily to people with pre-existings that have the money to buy lucrative health care or those that can swing $3,500-7,500 a year(ish) in insurance and deductible funds to keep the plans AND keep their deductibles met.
I agree with Obama’s assertion that more people will have health insurance at the end of this. However, health insurance does not equal health care. The health care will still be lacking because, once again, the US as a society is punishing people who are at the bottom of the earnings ladder rather than helping them become prosperous members of society.
The state based exchanges are going along pretty well, aren’t they? Isn’t the primary reason the Feds are forced to create such a massive effort is because so many Republican state legislatures refused to have anything to do with it? Got one here in the People’s Republic of Minnesota, I gather there are some problems, but nothing drastic.
The plan was originally to encourage and support local exchanges, which makes a lot of sense, since conditions in Mississippi are so much different than conditions in Connecticut. The Federally based exchange was never intended to replace and surmount such exchanges, it was intended to be the option when more useful programs were not available because freedom.
Republican resistance didn’t stop ObamaCare, they just made it more difficult to create something as good as it might have been. Now we have to do it that hard way, fix problems as they arise, and overcome resistance to fixing those problems each and every time.
