Posted on 11/12/2016 4:19:09 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
After reiterating his promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President-elect Donald Trump has indicated that he may keep two of the law’s most popular provisions. One is straightforward enough — children up to the age of 26 being allowed to stay on their parents’ plan. The other — preventing insurance companies from denying coverage because of preexisting conditions — offers a perfect illustration of why Trump and most of the other Republicans critics of Obamacare don’t understand the health insurance market.
Let’s say that in the beautiful new world of “repeal and replace,” insurers are required to sell you insurance despite the fact that your kid has a brain tumor. Insurance companies know what to do with that. Their actuaries can calculate that kids with brain tumors typically require (I’m making this number up) about $200,000 a year in medical care. So they’ll offer to sell you a policy at an annual premium of $240,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
That's referred to as "Association Health Plans" and has been proposed as legislation. Any association of anything would be able to form a group.
Currently there are Christian health groups which you could seek out and join...it's not exactly insurance, but would cover your claims.
Normally people with group insurance are not scrutinized too closely for pre-existing conditions.
That's because carriers assume if you're healthy enough to work, you're healthy enough to insure.
And that's why I asked you those questions.
if trump doesn’t get it repealed now. his presidency will be destroyed by it. period. you gotta keep your promises in politics.
I stand in awe of President Donald Trump. I thank him for his sacrifice, his patriotism and the energy he summons on our behalf.
Any fool that thinks something like “pre-existing conditions” will suddenly derail the Trump Train is a fool!
Well, whatever we call the small business groups, it is legislation that is needed. As for the Christian health insurance options, I’m afraid I do not quite trust them . . . They are perhaps better for ordinary medical expenses, but relying on them for a major catastrophe seems a little dicey. And I am in good health, so catastrophic insurance is all I really care about.
www.medicalcostsharing.com
Or search the term:
Christian health insurance alternative
Maybe you can find some relief there.
If st. Jude’s can run a hospital with zero costs I am sure many could. That’s the hospital we should emulate for the country.
If you live in a state with a crappy pool, you have no choice, so perhaps you are right. I just hope that they don’t go the way of restoring high risk pools.
Get out of here, whoever wrote this article has no idea how insurance works at its basis.. let alone the complexities of Medicare and Medicaid... etc...
There is no doubt preexisting conditions introduce problems... but simple community pricing and pooling models take care of this..
Like it or not, insurance is socialism folks, its based upon the constructs.... you socialize the risk. You calculate the risk of a pool and you price accordingly. If I know i have 100,000,000 people in my pool I can project the complete medical expenditures related to those 100,000,000 people, even though some of them will be incredibly costly... most will not... I work out a price that ensures that the pool always has enough money to cover all those inside it whether they are heavy users of medical services or light.... That’s how insurance works.
There are, and have been states in this country, that legally have banned denying coverage for pre-existing conditions... and they pre-exist Obamacare... So, pre-existing conditions of and by themselves are not a major hurdle... they became a hurdle for Obamacare, and were guaranteed to bk the system because large swaths of those who were going to utilize it were high risk users.... from states that did not mandate you could not deny folks with pre-existing conditions... so the obamacare pools were never going to work, they were going to be to heavily weighted with high risk individuals... and they just lied to themselves that young healthy people barely getting by would happily pay, what was for them, large sums of money for a product they didn’t feel they needed.... and they didn’t... Then to make sure those young folks didn’t revolt agains them the next election they made the penalty for not paying so insanely small they were going to happily pay the fine rather than the premium... etc etc etc...
You can insure and deal with pre-existing conditions... the reality if you are able to be employed, most folks never get rejected for pre-existing conditions.. because most employers policies are written in such a way that if you are an emplloyee you and your family are covered.. the insurance company can’t reject you... the pool that has this problem are largely folks who don’t have jobs that offer health insurance at all, or that they are unemployable because their health is too bad for them to remain employed...
But don’t kid yourself... pre-existing conditions can be dealt with and dealt with in realistic ways that are not Obamacare...
Now, lets get Trump inaugurated, and we can work on the solution.
I’m not saying do nothing. But, I believe it’s alot more complicated. Not just repeal and it’s over. What happens to the millions that no longer would have insurance. Including many working families.
Healthcare costs became outrageous because we had emergency rooms full of uninsured people who never paid the bill. Those costs were passed on to those who did pay their bills.
I’m sure he will repeal it. But it wont happen overnight.
Look, you're the one crapping on ALL HRPs because of your bad experience with one ineffective one. Over all, they have helped millions of people both in and outside of the high risk groups.
Since you don't seem to know, there are HRPs that are less expensive and have better coverage than yours, and if buying across state lines gives you access to one of those, you'd probably be grateful to have it.
It would mean you'd have to do some shopping or let a broker find it for you.
Also, once you are in a HRP, that doesn't mean you are stuck there forever. You can keep applying for regular pool status, and if you continue being healthy, as you stated, you may well qualify for regular premiums and coverage.
Chances of that are pretty good, since carriers are pretty selective about HRP status. A lot of people aren't in there for very long, either they qualify for insurance...or they unfortunately die from their high risk "pre-ex".
i don’t know how old you are, but if you remember RR, you’ll remember that the country and economy were in tatters. we were arguably worse off then due to the disasters that were nixon, ford and carter. Reagan, didn’t hesitate, he took immediate, bold, and extremely unpopular and painful steps to gradually turn the economy around and save the nation.
obamacare is pure evil, it is destroying our country on a thousand different levels, it is killing folks right now.
God put Donald Trump in to do His Will. Woe to God’s man if he disobeys God. then woe to him and woe to us all. you sound like the over-thinking patient with cancer who delays treatment while working out their optimal path past the disease. the only way to destroy cancer and the national cancer that is obamacare is to cut it out or burn it out, and as with all cancers, time is of the essence.
obamacare is President Trump’s first real test. it’s his white whale, it’s the great obama and dem hope if they get to keep it. If he doesn’t get obamacare, it will most assuredly get him and us.
Your demeaning tone is unnecessary. Yes, of course you want to come by across state lines, then I might be able to experience other high risk pool options. I am simply speaking from experience. I had no such option. I still remain skeptical of the high risk pool idea. It has an element of the arbitrary and discriminatory.
Congress will repeal and states will go back to allowing carriers to sell real insurance, some with unlimited underwriting (which means they ask you lots of questions so you can have cheaper premiums if you are healthy and deserve it) Mandates on employee groups will be rescinded, premiums will drop and jobs will start to come back.
I’m sure he will repeal it. But it wont happen overnight.
That is absolutely true, but Obama and the RATs can completely wear that, as no Republican supported it.
He has promised this as an action in his first 100 days, no doubt Congress will consider this as "emergency legislation" and it would become effective quickly.
Carriers would be aware of the impending changes and begin gearing up before the floodgates are flung open, so they can begin writing new business immediately.
There is no such thing as a hospital with zero costs.
Sure they do. It's called life insurance. You buy on a bet that you won't need it, but your survivors might. Medical insurance is purchased against the prospect of an unexpected accident or illness. You pay based on current health and likelyhood of incurring an incident that will require payment. If you're already sick, there is no longer a probability of a payout. It is a certainty. That's a bet nobody will accept. What you should buy is a maintenance plan similar to a motor vehicle. Plan on paying for regular services. A pool of insulin dependent diabetics could arrange an ongoing stream of purchases from suppliers that allow for a volume discount based on an assured pool of customers It's easier to produce with an assured customer base and assured payment stream. Bursty demand and payment is too chaotic for a manufacturer to support with a high volume, low price sales strategy.
The provision for keeping children on until age 26 has benefitted my family - my healthy children cost little extra to cover and have cost the insurance company almost nothing.
The only way I can see to cover people with chronic illnesses is to provide some sort of 2 tiered system - healthy people can purchase traditional medical insurance, while the chronically unhealthy are covered by some sort of Medicare-like system subsidized by the taxpayers. But where to draw the line and how to minimize fraud?
This is going to be a toughie.
Most states have long had organizations allowing for such pooled small business insurance.
The issue we’re talking about is those who already have cancer but not insurance.
I run a small business. And I have searched and searched and searched for such organizations, and I have not found them.
LOL! The WaaaaaaPo ignores the myriad problems with ObamaCare and all the people being hurt by it to worry about a small segment that may be “inconvenienced” - and that Trump will necessarily need to provide the protective safety net he talked about - only a lot cheaper than what we had and what we have now.
And how is he going to do that? Is it even possible? I don't think so. Obamacare is a failure, and the biggest mistake we can make is to replace one failure with another. Repeal it and millions of people will lose coverage. Keep it, or even worse try and replace it, and in the future millions of people will lose their coverage AND the U.S. will have spent trillions in the process. Best to bite the bullet now, repeal it, and let the chips fall where they may.
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