Posted on 09/24/2015 2:17:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The "leftists" only acknowledge this because they're going to go after the employers next as the boogeymen in this whole debacle...
More "class warfare"...beyond sick and tired of those bastards in DC...all of them and especially the USSC for not stopping this abomination in its tracks when they should have.
I think you're wrong about this. Obamacare has had a major impact on employer-sponsored plans. Many of the less expensive plans that were available to employers prior to 2010 aren't available anymore. Obamacare didn't just require individuals and employers to buy medical insurance; it also included a whole host of mandates for what the insurance coverage had to include.
Let’s call it what it is:
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
Democratcare
No Republican touched it. It was 100% a Democrat bill.
Typical. Blame others for the evil they inflict.
I can’t say I’m surprised.
Didn’t supporters of Obamacare promise that this would never happen?
I predicted back then that the GOP would never overturn Obamacare even if they had the power to do so. I hate being right.
So, where is all of that money going? And who is it going to?
I guess that when the government requires that you purchase a product from a private entity, that private entity will wring every nickel that they can out of people.
Man, I wish that I had a business that can use the government to force people to purchase my product at gun point, and I would be able to set my own price at whatever I desire it to be.
The perks of being a crony.
True that there are more mandates, but the reality is that most employer plans far exceeded the mandates already. It's hard to imagine an employer provided plan that didn't cover maternity care, for instance.
Medical cost inflation has been running at historical lows. I certainly don't give the ACA the credit but the fact is increased health insurance costs for employees are due to employer decisions, not any laws or underlying cost increases.
When you receive your health insurance bill, remember that contraception is required by the government from your healthcare provider even for involuntary anal sex!
Medical cost inflation has been running at historical lows. I certainly don't give the ACA the credit but the fact is increased health insurance costs for employees are due to employer decisions, not any laws or underlying cost increases.
Medical cost inflation has been running at historical lows because with rising deductibles people can't afford to pay for their medical care even when they ARE covered. That's exactly what the article is saying. What's the point of paying $X per month for insurance coverage (regardless of whether the employer or employee pays for it) if you have to run up several thousand dollars in medical bills each year before your insurance company covers anything? Watch this thread for a few hours, and you'll probably read several posts from people who stopped taking medication simply because their insurance plans wouldn't pay for the prescriptions anymore even if the medication was actually covered under their plans.
The insurance premiums are being paid for coverage of people who are healthy and don’t actually need the insurance ... so the insurance carriers can pay the medical bills for older/sicker people whose premiums are far less than the cost of their medical care.
And they were promised up to 20% profits. Of course, Obama and the Democrats sold that as “no more than 20% profits” but what’s the difference? Who else can make 20% on other people’s money every year? Lest there be no doubt why the insurance companies were for it, and why their stock prices rallied after it was passed.
as a provider I am seeing people who have to max out their 3-6K deductibles before coming in. And some of these poor souls do it in the first quarter or the year. Young families are struggling
Yes, I know that.
What I’m pointing out is the COST of treatments and services before vs. after the advent of obamacare.
The costs are outpacing inflation, regardless of government mandates. Obamacare has made it that much more worse.
So the question is: how do we get the costs of healthcare for people who pay for their own way back down into affordable territory?
Our premium stayed the same, but the deductible went up almost 40% and we dropped to a Bronze plan at work. They will not be able to hide the increase next year. Our co-pay for next year is 20% for almost everything with a $4000 deductible per person.
That's why there are some health care procedures whose costs have gone down over time because they aren't covered by insurance and therefore people must pay for them by themselves. Elective plastic surgery and Lasik eye surgery are two perfect examples of this. If a Lasik procedure costs $25,000 then hardly anyone would ever opt for it. But doctors had an incentive to get it down to a manageable price because they'd end up doing a lot procedures that way. In effect, direct payments from patients makes the health care system operate much more closely to a tradition business model where prices actually decline over time.
In the group health market insurers look at the demographics of the group, in this case employees, and quote rates appropriately. In your hypothetical they would indeed have to offer OB/GYN coverage but would discount the cost to $0 based on the demographics.
Medical cost inflation has been running at historical lows because with rising deductibles people can't afford to pay for their medical care even when they ARE covered.
This is another of my pet peeves. There's a lot of talk about rising deductibles, but in the individual market that's strictly a matter of consumer choice. Every exchange offers a range of plans, some with very high deductibles and some with almost none. Of course, the premiums also vary just as widely. It's up to the consumer whether they want cheap premiums or low deductibles.
In the employer market the deductible is strictly a decision made by the employer, and the trade off is the same - lower deductible, higher premium.
One caveat is that most of my experience has been with larger companies and I'm extrapolating what I know about that market to the employer market as a whole.
My main point is that the employer market is a completely different animal than the individual, and for various reasons people conflate the two when it suits their purposes.
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