Gee. Who could have predicted that people would be spending half what they used to to buy health insurance under ObamaCare? That’s the situation in New York State. And everywhere new rates have been announced, those rates are lower. Good thing that the House of Representatives is having another vote to delay the implementation of the law.
Meanwhile, an Obamacare pilot program successfully demonstrated that we can save money in Medicare.
The current situation is that with only Social Security as income and the remainder of a mortgage to pay down, I cannot use Medicare because of the high deductibles (which look low to folks making more that median income) and co-pays. So my Medicare gets deducted every month essentially to cover catastrophic care. And I doubt that I am alone in this situation.
The 2014 elections will hinge in part on what people actually see when they go to the exchanges to purchase their insurance and whether purchasing makes more sense than paying the penalty. And it will hinge on how employer-sponsored care turns out; many employers are continuing to strip the quality of their plans offered and blame it on Obamacare coming.
I would be more worried about how the exchanges are coming online than crowing right now about rates that might change after the exchanges are in operation. It is relatively easy for insurance companies to manipulate premium rates for political purposes in the short term.
It is also going to turn on an unanticipated side effect: Many low wage jobs are being cut back to part time, under 29 hrs/week. This is a disaster for many.
You are going to hear a lot of discussion of this, and this is a serious problem.
Are you talking about high deductibles in Medicare Supplemental plans?
No, I am talking about Medicare Part A and Part B.
Many people think that Medicare covers 100% like Medicaid. You and I know that co-pays are 20% and 20% of huge bills is still out of reach for many Americans. I, myself, plan to use FEHB as my Medicare supplement if Darryl Issa and a spineless Senate don’t take it away.
Conservative POV:
It’s not that lowering prices is a bad thing, in and of itself.
But lowering prices at the expense of HOLY PROFIT – that, THAT, should be criminal!!!
Are you telling me that there was a reason Republicans refused to vote for a bill “written by the Heritage Foundation?”
This will not sit well with DailyKos.
Holy Shit!!! You mean a law designed to lower health care costs lowers health care costs? Who’d a thunk it?
From the NYTimes article:
It’s called “buying market share” — insurance companies do that all the time. Only in this situation, in the near term, those health insurers will increase their profits as the number of adult customers increases from 17,000 to 615,000 paying an average of $3,600/year because the expansion of Medicaid will reduce the amount of costs that health care providers currently “eat.” $3,600/year isn’t substantially different from the cost large employers and their employees currently pay. However, the OA&G costs for individual policies are higher, and therefore, the insurers profits will be lower in this market segment. How much lower (and in turn how much and how soon those rates will increase) will depend on a number of factors.
If the supply of health care providers increases fast enough to meet the increased demand for services, the change in the aggregate will be positive. If not, well…
On a related note, check out Kurt Eichenwald’s My Family, Our Cancer, and the Murderous Cruelty of Conservatives at Vanity Fair. Not only is it cruel, it’s economically stupid to reduce the supply of one of the lowest cost health care providers in the system. A massive expansion of Planned Parenthood nationwide would not only expand access to health care for millions, it would also significantly reduce the per capita cost of health care.
Also, I haven’t seen any reports on what these premiums(the ones people are cheering today) actually get people. Is it the bare minimum according to the law(probably)?
The study in Booman’s second link talks about “silver” level plans which is the second cheapest kind available on an insurance exchange. Since they are on the exchange, they are required to cover 11 (or 12 or 13 depending on the state) categories of medical services and cover many forms of preventive care with no deductibles or co-pay.
This is the “bare minimum according to the law” but it’s still pretty generous.
More on the basics of the four plans. The coverages seem not to have been fully defined, but they won’t vary dramatically. A few decades ago when health providers offered more “bells and whistles,” (i.e. private hospital room v. hospital ward) there were more differences among insurance policies.
Note the federal subsidy only applies to the silver plan. It has a 30% co-pay. So, those with this coverage will need to shop to find and access the lowest cost providers.
Huh. Our premiums went up every year since the law was passed (greater than the previous increase as well). Now, maybe that’s the effect of charging more for young people, but it practically resulted in not being able to afford insurance for me.
Now in a much better place/state/job/insurance than last year, but I wonder what would have happened at the other place.
Those premium increases had nothing to do with obamacare. The major part of the law has not yet gone into effect.
What you are witnessing is the reason for Obamacare, not the result of it.
Convenient that. Though I know this perfectly well, despite my insurance company making sure to put “because of Obamacare” in ever letter announcing things were getting worse and more expensive.
But what Booman doesn’t note is that prices in New York were apparently astronomically high.
Premiums may be lower but what about coverage? It’s a classic bait and switch to offer a lower premium but with higher co-pays, deductibles and out of pocket limits.
A year or so ago, BCBS FEHB made a big deal about holding the line on increases, while quietly eliminating deductibles and co-pays toward “out of pocket” limits and also raising those limits so far that the government watchdog protested. Since those costs are no longer “out of pocket” for me, I wonder whose pocket they came from?
there are minimum coverage requirements in the law, I’m sure someone has them somewhere
Doesn’t that refer to procedure coverage rather than co-pays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket limits?