Posted on 12/15/2014 3:27:28 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Americans visiting Healthcare.gov to purchase 2015 health-insurance plans are finding a nice surprise: Average premiums for the cheap bronze plans have increased only by 3.4% and premiums for the middle-of-the-road silver plans are rising by 5.8%, according to the American Action Forum. Where are the double-digit premium increases that so many predicted? Check back around this time in 2016. Thats when youll see the real spikes.
The Affordable Care Act includes two temporary programs that make compliant health-care plans temporarily appear far cheaper than they are: Risk corridors and reinsurance. Both programs will expire on Jan. 1, 2017. By November 2016, consumers will know how that sunset will affect their plans premium.
Risk corridors and reinsurance are simple concepts: They subsidize insurance companies with taxpayer money.
This leaves the Affordable Care Act in a precarious position. It was sold on the promises of affordability and universal coverage, yet neither promise can be kept after 2017. Americas debate over health-care reform is only getting started.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I see the doctor about once a year. It costs me 80 dollars. I pay cash. Sometimes I have to see him twice a year for stitches or antibiotics. The highest I've paid for free market healthcare is around $400 because it involved a scalpel.
Are you very sick all of the time, or do you just like giving money that could have gone directly to the doctor to the insurance leeches instead?
My advice is to pay the fine and find a doctor who takes cash or plastic.
So that will be right after the election, eh? As usual.
Well I hope you never get cancer where my chemo treatments were billed at $10k a pop. I am very thankful I had insurance and got the best of care since I’m still alive.
I'm glad you are, too.
Ours (my family’s) payment is going up almost $100 per month, but most of the change is in the subsidy. I don’t know if the subsidy schedules have changed or if it’s due to a small increase in income that jumped me into a higher income bracket with a lot lower subsidy. All this for insurance that (regardless of what is claimed) doesn’t even pay for routine preventive care.
The not-funny thing is, what with the 17% increase in electric rates that we just got, some other things, and the health insurance premium (the part I pay directly), my effective income is almost certain to be lower in 2015 than 2014.
“He had an opportunity to make it better, and he did almost the opposite of the things that would have helped.”
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Only those who were inexperienced and or naive expected any different outcome. Anyone who expected otherwise should be booking a seat in the pumpkin patch to wait for the Great Pumpkin to rise up.
There are powerful groups of people neither inexperienced or naïve who want the system to continue to worsen, financially speaking, for the average person, because they benefit. The middle class is being sucked dry.
I don’t get a subsidy....so I’ll feel the difference....but I can compensate some for it by adjusting other expenses here and there I think.
I learned long ago not to stress out before there’s something to get stressed about! LOL....What if’s of life come and go and we all make it through them even when the ride might not be real comfortable, we do get through.
I’ve just determined no matter what...as long as Obama is in office everything’s going to cost more and everything be screwed up unitl he’s out....and then we’ll all be playing clean up!
I’m surprised an insurance company isn’t starting to sell deductible gap insurance for the high co pays.
Thank you and good health to you.
I would think that would be a rather tough business model. I doubt they could round up enough healthy people to offset the sick in the high deductible plans to make it worth their while.
If you want to lower your deductibles and copays, there are 2 ways to do it. The first is to increase your coverage from say a bronze to a gold plan. If you have health issues, this allows you to spread the cost out over the entire year versus paying the deductibles all up front.
The second way would be to lower your income so it falls in the range of being eligible for silver plan cost sharing subsides. This a strategy that some early retirees are using..
This guy is a professor. Don’t professors make $150,000-#200,000 per year with platinum benefit plans (and other perks)? They are protected from being effected by this economy-killing, medical-system lunacy. I bet he loves his “white privilege”.
I think your assumptions are correct about the professor. I would think he would get at least gold level coverage. We should find out in summer 2015 if insurance companies need to be bailed out..
As I recall, within the nobamacare monstrosity there are guarantees to the insurance companies that they will be reimbursed for losses.
I couldn’t read the whole article, but that is what the prof was talking about. Insurance companies have until next summer to cook their books..
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