The question is, will what replaces it be even worse?
99 thoughts on “ObamaCare”
Yes. Next question tm/Instapundit
Exactly, Rand. The solution will be worse. Typical Alinski strategy. Ram it through, and when it doesn’t work, find a solution with even more government control. Not that this is really new, everybody here and anyone who paid attention knew that this was just the first step towards single-payer.
The government ratchet. It only goes one way.
Perhaps I’m naive, but I still have hope that enough people would realize how badly the Democrats screwed up with ObamaCare and would oppose using that failure as an excuse for an even more intrusive government program. How stupid would someone have to be to see this mess and think, “Man, I want some more of that!”
But then, how stupid does someone have to be to vote for Democrats in the first place? Sigh.
Suppose they gave a Health Care reform and no one came?
From what I hear (and yes, I expect to be corrected on this in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . .), no one has signed up.
Businesses were given a “bye year”, and we will see if that “can get kicked down the road — again. Many if not the plurarlity of Medicaid signups are people who would have signed up for Medicaid under the old system; most of the Exchange signups are people who had insurance and needed a replacement plan.
So maybe this isn’t the disaster that the Right Wing is trumpeting because . . . nothing much has happened. Maybe this isn’t the success the Left Wing is crowing about (Obamacare — signed, sealed, and delivering reads a bumper sticker on an expensive SUV) — maybe it amounts to “rearrangement of the deck chairs” on the Existing System.
I don’t think all the people who lost their insurance and/or doctor would say that “nothing much has happened.”
Paul, I really wish that were true. But premiums have soared. Mine went up from $110.00 a month to $343.00 a month.
I’ll be dropping my insurance at the end of the month, unless Jim can hand over the $223 a month.
$110/month is an incredible bargain. The only way insurance companies can offer a deal like that is by cherry picking the customers who are least likely to incur big medical bills. But the flip side of that cherry picking is that the leftover customers either paid exorbitant premiums, or were turned down flat.
My premium (for my wife and myself) last year was $1,376/mo. That $1,376 is what made bargains like your $110 possible.
Back in the late 90s there was an Internet retailer called ValueAmerica that had incredible bargains. I bought a Weber grill from them and it cost hundreds of dollars less than what the local dealer was asking. Then ValueAmerica closed its doors — VA had been buying market share by taking a loss on every sale, and they ran out of investor money. When that grill died years later its replacement cost twice as much. There are a couple ways to think about that: 1) Poor me, the price of gas grills has soared, or 2) Boy was I lucky to get such a good deal on that last grill.
You’ve been extremely lucky to have gotten such a bargain on insurance in the past, but now the health insurance premium lottery is closed, and everyone pays pretty much the same price. It sucks that you have to pay more than you are used to, but you won’t be paying nearly as much as the unlucky have been paying all along.
Yes Jim, please keep telling people like it is.
The old New Deal coalition was tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect. You put an increased tax burden on a smaller number of wealthy people who don’t vote for you anyway, you spread the goodies out to a larger number of less well off people, and you cruise to reelection victory.
Only the new, new deal is what, regulate and regulate, scold and scold, pass the blame and pass the blame? Our own Jim is pretty good at scolding people, and the President is especially good at scoldings. Stop your complainin’ about $343/month, because you are helping Jim and family get a great deal. I think the President should run some truth-telling TV commercials about people bellyaching about how the law is treating them and how what they are getting is for the Greater Good?
I just can’t wait for November.
You progressives. Here’s your argument: Be grateful for the feces I hand out to you.
My plan was for catastrophic insurance, it wasn’t much at all, but it was all I could afford, thanks to the egregious policies of the state governments.
Now, I’m priced out of that.
The free market made an affordable plan for me. Now the state has made it unaffordable. Thanks Jim, you know so much more than me. What ever could a little ole citizen like me do without you?
it wasn’t much at all
So the $343 vs. $110 comparison is between “not much at all” insurance and comprehensive insurance?
The free market made an affordable plan for me.
It did that by letting the insurer cherry-pick customers. Lucky for you, not so lucky for others.
Now the state has made it unaffordable.
By taking luck out of the equation.
“So the $343 vs. $110 comparison is between “not much at all” insurance and comprehensive insurance?”
Obamacare plans don’t have to be comprehensive. They don’t even have to partially cover prescriptions. Comprehensive is a worthless euphemism that does nothing to define what type of coverage people get. Comprehensive should mean more than just maternity care for men and free birth control for women.
The meme that Obamacare plans offer more benefits to the policy holder is a bunch of BS. Many of the “comprehensive” coverages don’t benefit the policy holder but rather some nebulous undefined group of others that need to be subsidized through increasing everyone’s rates.
Obamacare plans don’t have to be comprehensive. They don’t even have to partially cover prescriptions
Prescription drugs are one of the 10 essential benefits that every policy has to cover.
“Prescription drugs are one of the 10 essential benefits that every policy has to cover.”
They don’t. Sorry to burst your bubble. Did someone lie to you about what Obamacare would do? Join the club. My current Obamacare compliant policy does not cover prescriptions. Well, it does after I spend $9k. That will help…not at all.
My current Obamacare compliant policy does not cover prescriptions. Well, it does after I spend $9k.
In other words, it does cover them.
That will help…not at all.
Until you have big prescription bills — then it will be a life-saver. A round of chemo can easily run $20k.
And, Mr. Get-Even (because that is what your argument is),
The reason you paid so much isn’t because of my piddly catastrophic plan, it’s because of screwed up state-run insurance companies. It’s because of poor legislation.
But that is too much for you to figure out. You’d rather stick it to the other guy, rather than fix the system. You’d rather intensify the effect of the problem’s cause.
Your absolute lack of economic knowledge is appalling and scary.
My premium (for my wife and myself) last year was $1,376/mo.
The entirety of my medical claims for last year, family of 4 adults, 3 of them women, with vision and dental cost less than $1,300.
Jim, that you are paying 50% more than the average US annual premium isn’t something I would brag about doing. It simply shows you don’t know how to manage your own money. You telling us the best way to manage our money is absurd.
He had a latinum plated health insurance policy then downgraded it and claimed Obamacare saved him a ton of money when he could have chosen to buy a cheaper plan any time he wanted.
No, I had a high deductible HSA plan. There weren’t any significantly cheaper plans available to me — I looked.
It simply shows you don’t know how to manage your own money.
Do tell me how I should have managed my money. Gone without insurance? It isn’t like I chose that premium — it was the best available to me.
“No, I had a high deductible HSA plan. There weren’t any significantly cheaper plans available to me — I looked.”
You should have moved to Washington State. Instead of a high deductible high premium plan with no coverage you could have had a high premium low deductible plan for the same or lower premium cost with excellent coverage for prescriptions, preventative care, wide provider networks, and other things you keep saying didn’t exist under the old system.
Too bad those plans are gone now due to Obamacare.
It is rather incredible that a person who can afford $1400 a month in premiums and complains that it is too high also thinks it is a good thing that people who had more affordable plans with coverage that fit them better as individuals should have to pay more without complaint and that they should be happy that their cost increases subsidize other people who in cases like yours are perfectly able to pay their own way without people with less money subsidizing their health care.
What else is going wrong in your life Richie Rich? Pool boy didn’t get all the leafs out? Need to pass a national pool care act so that people without pools subsidize your pool cleaning expenses?
You should have moved to Washington State
The problem wasn’t my state, it was my risk pool.
Too bad those plans are gone now due to Obamacare.
For lots of people they never existed.
should have to pay more without complaint
People can complain all they want, but they should also look around and realize how good they had it. They should also remember how tenuous that position was — any change in their health status could have meant a loss of coverage or jacked-up premiums. That isn’t the case any more.
What else is going wrong in your life Richie Rich?
What is the appeal of this name calling?
Do tell me how I should have managed my money. Gone without insurance? It isn’t like I chose that premium — it was the best available to me.
It’s the best available to you because you support socialized medicine which restricts the options available.
For millions of people who lost their insurance and replaced it with more expensive plans, we do look back fondly on the old system. That is the problem with Obamacare, for the majority of people, the old system was better.
I didn’t have my policy due to luck or risk pools. It wasn’t some mystical unicorn. It was a common plan. I am a middle aged man with pre-existing conditions and some chronic health issues. My old plan was more affordable and had better coverage for me as an individual. You could have had a similar plan to mine in WA, especially for the money you spent. Actually, for the money you spent, you would have had outstanding coverage.
Which is why it is disgusting that you use this class warfare rhetoric when you could pay your own way. Now, you want poor people to subsidize your health care and you claim it is the moral thing to do.
All you have are lies and distortions about the old system and lies and distortions about the new system. Well, I have been through both and Obamacare made things worse.
And did you really just claim that it was illegal under Obamacare to raise premiums? Let me assure you that is not the case. Obama lied to you again.
I didn’t have my policy due to luck or risk pools.
How can you be so sure? It was totally legal for your insurer to discriminate based on your health history, but you think they didn’t bother?
You could have had a similar plan to mine in WA, especially for the money you spent.
Again, how can you be so sure? Your insurer was not required to offer me anything.
you use this class warfare rhetoric
Ha! You are the one engaging in class warfare here. Just look at your name-calling, and bizarre allegations about platinum-plated Cadillac plans, massage therapy and swimming pools.
I’m arguing that an ethical health insurance system does not charge people more because they have the bad luck to be at higher risk of health problems. We take this for granted in the group insurance market — everyone who gets a certain insurance policy from a big employer pays the same, regardless of their health history (or even their age!). But before the ACA the individual insurance market was a cruel lottery, where the losers are multiply punished by illness, recission, benefit caps and pricing discrimination.
Are you familiar with John Rawls’ veil of ignorance? Perform a thought experiment: if before your birth you did not know what your health history was going to be — did not know whether you’d be blessed with perfect health, or have huge health problems, or something in between — what sort of system would you choose? Would you choose one that rewards the lucky and punishes the unlucky, and then just hope you turned out to be one of the lucky ones? Or would you design a system in which the lucky subsidize the unlucky, so that chance would not play so great a role in your fate?
And did you really just claim that it was illegal under Obamacare to raise premiums?
It’s now illegal for your insurer to raise premiums on you as an individual, e.g. because you got sick. That was routine before the ACA.
$110/month is an incredible bargain. The only way insurance companies can offer a deal like that is by cherry picking the customers who are least likely to incur big medical bills.
You, um, don’t get this concept of ‘insurance’, do you?
Let me explain: you make a contract with an ‘insurance’ company where, if something bad happens, they’ll pay out per the contract, and you give them money. They decide how much money they’ll charge based on how much they’re likely to pay out. You benefit, because, although, you may pay for nothing, in the worst case you get far more than you pay them. They benefit because they skim a percentage off the top.
Hence, the people least likely to need big payments pay the least, because the ‘insurance’ company is unlikely to have to pay out large amounts of money.
‘Insurance’ is a pretty clever system, don’t you think?
I meant that “nothing much is happening” in terms of the ACA acquiring a constituency of people getting the government subsidies to purchase affordable health plans that they like to make the ACA unrepealable. As in the bumper sticker “Signed, Sealed, and Delivering” (and crammed down your throat).
You are getting a raw deal from the ACA whereas Jim is telling us he is getting a great deal. Whether the rest of us get a raw deal from the ACA, that time may come, but Jim keeps reassuring me that won’t happen.
The pro-Obamacare people, and not just Jim, in defending what they are doing are claiming that the people in your shoes are “small in number”, you know, the unavoidable small population experiencing “side effects” of a medical treatment helping many people.
My suspicion is that the people, like you and as of now being harmed by the ACA are small in number. Are there enough people in your situation to result in a blowout election in 2014? After the Romney thing, I am a political pessimist.
But the people like Jim, who are very happy with the deal from the ACA are equally small in number, and that right now the ACA is a wash. We probably have a golden opportunity just to roll back the whole thing and start over, but whether that can happen is another story.
My suspicion is that the people, like you and as of now being harmed by the ACA are small in number. Are there enough people in your situation to result in a blowout election in 2014?
Have you been paying no attention to the polls?
I’ve been looking at Rasmussen’s daily poll. It looks just like it did in 2009. The only difference is that Obama didn’t get a strong State of the Union bounce like he usually does. Looks to me analogous to trench warfare. The only way you’re getting people to budge now is if they’re fixing bayonets and having a go at the other side.
I mean Rand, who am I going to believe, you or that Fact Checker at the NYT, who unlike Glenn Kessler at the WaPo, spells Pinocchio with only one “c” and insists that the claim (by the Right) that more people have lost insurance or have gotten worse insurance than have been helped by the ACA is false.
What do I know? Someone “in authority” in the MSM is telling me that the ACA is not really all the bad (“a man, on the tee-vee, only he can’ be a man ’cause he don’ smoke the same cig-ar-ette as me!”) Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics is making the case that the ACA isn’t helping nearly as many the people as claimed. So I split the difference and say, you are both right, the ACA is harming people, but probably not as many people as claimed, and the ACA is helping people, also probably not as many people as claimed.
Unlike Mr. Cramdown, I don’t want to dismiss anyone’s personal account of being hurt by the ACA (or helped out, for all that matters). On the other hand, in the aggregate, I don’t think the ACA is really doing anything right now.
Paul, a wash isn’t good enough. If it is a wash then then Congress would have been better off doing nothing at all about the issue and instead spending their time on more pressing matters.
My suspicion is that the people, like you and as of now being harmed by the ACA are small in number. Are there enough people in your situation to result in a blowout election in 2014? After the Romney thing, I am a political pessimist.
Paul, a huge number of people are upset about ACA, because for most, rates went up – and don’t forget the millions who lost their old plans thanks to it.
Some, such as me, are now UNINSURED thanks to this awful legislation and the lying sack of maggot-infested bovine excrement currently putrefying the Oval Office. (If you like your insurance, you can keep you insurance. Period!” was Obama’s oft repeated lie). Well, me, and millions like me, lost our insurance.
I could get an Ibamacare bronze plan for about $4800 a year or so, but that’s a lot more than I was paying and would be far worse coverage. I’d had my prior coverage for over a decade, and I’ve been insured all of my adult life – until now.
So, I’m uninsured. I don’t like it, not one bit.
Will this translate to me doing all I can to support the GOP this year? Yes, absolutely, with time, and money, *UNLESS* they keep pushing Amnesty, because if they do, they aren’t getting one damn dime from me, nor will I vote for anyone who supports for it, period. (and unlike Obama, when I make a promise, it actually means something).
My advise on the GOP, don’t support the party financially. Support individual candidates if they deserve it.
“My suspicion is that the people, like you and as of now being harmed by the ACA are small in number. Are there enough people in your situation to result in a blowout election in 2014?”
Over 6 million lost their insurance. That is greater than Obama’s margin of victory but I am sure some would still vote for him anyway because they buy into the blame everyone but Obama game. To answer your question, why do you think Obama delayed the employer mandate?
Ours went from $300/month to $750/month, and our deductible increased from $2500 to $6500. We can’t afford it, so we quit insurance and our doing a Christian health ministry.
It’s your fault that you were paying so little!
Don’t worry, the dems will come after your Christian plan.
I lost my insurance. Stuck with Primera for a replacement but none of the policies had comparable deductibles. Bronze was 222% higher and silver was 289% higher. Preiums are little lower for bronze but considering the high deductible and lack of coverage for prescriptions, it isn’t a good trade off. Silver on up all have higher premiums and deductibles. Under any plan, you will hit the out of pocket cap before insurance picks up 100% of the cost.
I checked the Lifewise site in December before choosing a policy to see if my doctor was in network and it was but then in January I was informed my doctor is no longer covered. So now I get to either find a new doctor or new insurance. I’ve been a month without medicine to treat a medical condition. I wont die but this is a major pain in the ass. Other people may not be as lucky as me.
I can’t wait for Obamacare to fully kick in for everyone else. Higher costs and the chance of losing your preferred physician are just the start. Obamacare is more than a website.
Woden, I feel your pain!
Of course, we need to be sacrificed for the greater good.
Jim thinks you and I are the only people in the entire country who could buy the plans we did. We are special little snowflakes that got sweet deals from insurance companies that are well known to treat people as individuals and write one of a kind policies. And of course, it was at the expense of people like him who had better health insurance policies and who also paid a higher price.
But hey, our costs go up his go down. It feels good to subsidize Jim’s massage therapy. He can afford to pay his own way but why not give him some of my money? Jim has things in life he wants to do and my goals and ambitions should take a back seat to his.
Just shut up and subsidize one-percenter-Jim because fairness and shut up.
It feels good to subsidize Jim’s massage therapy.
Why do you write things like this?
“Why do you write things like this?”
What difference, at this point, does it make?
For something that was supposed to provide affordable insurance coverage to previously uninsured people, it appears that almost everyone enrolled so far are people who were insured but lost the coverage they were promised they could keep.
Gallup reports that the uninsured rate for U.S. adults dropped by 1.2 percentage points in January. It’s early yet, but there is evidence that the ACA is providing affordable coverage to the previously uninsured.
Um, yah, because they jumped on Medicaid, which they were eligible before the “Gimme free stuff” Act.
“ACA is providing affordable coverage to the previously uninsured.”
Except that the costs of health insurance went up. Hiding the increases through taxpayer subsidies doesn’t mean health insurance policies cost less. It does mean that Democrat donors get more money from the government though.
That is what I am saying. It appears that the claims that Obamacare is actually moving backwards by more people being cancelled than have registered on the Exchanges may be right-wing political wishful thinking, but it appears this whole thing is just “treading water” right now.
Do you think there is any hope that this whole thing just quietly goes away — by Presidential proclamation?
“It appears that the claims that Obamacare is actually moving backwards by more people being cancelled than have registered on the Exchanges may be right-wing political wishful thinking, but it appears this whole thing is just “treading water” right now.”
How blind can you be? Evidently pretty blind.
It’s not treading water when you rip people’s plans away and force them to get more expensive ones – more expensive via premiums and/or deductibles.
It’s also not treading water if they cannot keep their doctor or their hospital. Especially if they were being treated for something like cancer.
Dope.
It’s not treading water when you rip people’s plans away and force them to get more expensive ones – more expensive via premiums and/or deductibles.
That was happening every year even before Obamacare.
t’s also not treading water if they cannot keep their doctor or their hospital.
Again, coverage network changes were hardly invented by Obama. Insurers limit networks to hold down premium prices, and have been doing so for decades.
It isn’t treading water when people, for the first time, can not be turned down for coverage or charged a higher premium because of health factors out of their control. It isn’t treading water when millions of poor and near-poor people can afford insurance for the first time thanks to Medicaid expansion and subsidies. Those are enormous, historic steps forward.
That was happening every year even before Obamacare.
Sure, but not to millions of people at a time, you jerk.
Sure, but not to millions of people at a time, you jerk.
To tens of millions of people every year. When’s the last time that premiums and/or deductibles did not go up across the board? Certainly not in the last decade.
“To tens of millions of people every year.”
Might as well say hundreds of millions if you are going to make stuff up. Tens of millions would mean everyone on the private market would lose their doctor every year and that was not the case.
” When’s the last time that premiums and/or deductibles did not go up across the board?”
My deductibles were pretty steady. Premiums did go up, especially as I got older. But Obama and his advocates said Obamacare would lower costs so any claim that things are the same as they always were is a refute of the reason to pass Obamacare.
But Obama and his advocates said Obamacare would lower costs so any claim that things are the same as they always were is a refute of the reason to pass Obamacare.
Indeed, here is Obama lying to the press: ” they’re going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market. “
Obama said that because it is what people wanted to hear, but it was a lie. Now that the lie is exposed, Jim’s acting like “well of course higher premiums were expected”.
they’re going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market. “
And that’s exactly what I did.
Nothing you say has any relevance, now that I know your only goal is to get free stuff.
To paraphrase Franklin, those who sacrifice liberty for security are idiots who sell out their country.
“That was happening every year even before Obamacare.”
Obamacare was promised to lower costs. Every time you mention that this was the way under the old system, it should come with an acknowledgement that Obamacare was created to fix this problem and failed.
“Again, coverage network changes were hardly invented by Obama. ”
Yes but why is it happening at this exact point in time to people in the individual market? It is because of the effects of Obamacare in this sector of the industry. It isn’t a coincidence that the same people who lost their insurance plans are the same people who are losing their doctors.
“It isn’t treading water when people, for the first time, can not be turned down for coverage or charged a higher premium because of health factors out of their control. ”
Except people are being charged higher premiums regardless of their health factors.
” It isn’t treading water when millions of poor and near-poor people can afford insurance for the first time thanks to Medicaid expansion and subsidies.”
But the costs of those plans are higher than equivalent plans under the old system, that subsidies hide the cost increases from the individual doesn’t change that fact.
” Those are enormous, historic steps forward.”
An unnecessary government intervention into the private lives of every American. Had Obama focused on the economy, more people would have jobs that allow them to buy their own insurance. Had Obama focused on reforming the actual factors that drive costs, he would not have had to resort to price controls like Hugo Chavez going after toilet paper manufacturers.
Obamacare was promised to lower costs
And health care spending shrank as a fraction of GDP in 2012, for the first time in over a decade.
“And health care spending shrank as a fraction of GDP in 2012, for the first time in over a decade.”
Health care spending was going down prior to the passage of Obamacare. It is amazing how you deny anything negative can be caused by Obamacare yet also take credit for things that Obamacare has little if anything to do with.
Health care spending was going down prior to the passage of Obamacare.
So Obamacare passes, and health care spending growth goes down even more, and you complain that Obamacare hasn’t lowered costs?
Costs and spending are different things. Costs can go up and spending go down.
“That was happening every year even before Obamacare.”
Your obstinance in repeating this canard is almost astonishing. I say almost because we are, after all, talking about you.
you KNOW that’s a lie and yet you keep repeating it as if it’s some golden truth
you KNOW it’s a distortion of the effect of common plan rollovers.
Yes from an intensely pedantic point of view the plans ended and were replaced every year. But since there were minor changes to the plans that nobody cared about, year after year after year, the effect you are trying to convey was simply not there.
Equally important: the insured USED TO HAVE the freedom to change plans of they didn’t like what happened during the rollover.
Now they don’t.
Once again your skill is only in recycling already-proven-to-be-lies statements for some reason known only to your delusional mind.
you KNOW that’s a lie
No, I do not. I watched my premiums, deductibles and copays climb year after year. Our plan would vanish, to be replaced by new options, all of which charged more for less. Every complaint that I’ve heard made about the exchange plans could just as truthfully be leveled at the plans I’ve been buying for the last decade.
Real freedom is knowing that you will definitely qualify for a plan, you won’t be dropped or go bankrupt if you get sick, and you won’t have to pay any more than anyone else your age.
“No, I do not. I watched my premiums, deductibles and copays climb year after year. ”
You’ve already adequately proven to us that you do not understand insurance nor know how to manage your money. So it’s no surprise you were getting rolled.
Once more:
millions and millions of people had plans change every year in ways so minor that they didn’t care.
Because YOU (claim) that it changed in major ways is no justification for disrupting, ruining and distorting millions of people’s lives. Especially since it’s obvious you don’t understand the subject.
And even if you managed your money well and really understood insurance (not likely but let’s stretch our imaginations), you were in a colossal minority. 85% were totally happy with what they had.
Same colossal minority as those 47 millions begging for insurance asking only the chance to get it….
….they aren’t signing up for Obama-crap either.
Clue that socialists never seem to grasp:
You don’t destroy millions of lives to fix a problem of a very very few.
So again, your claim that since insurance changes every year, so Obama-crap isn’t doing anything, is complete delusion for the simple reason that the changes, before Obama-crap were a total non-factor.
Hate to say this Jim but the plain fact is that whatever happened to YOU personally is irrelevant.
Furthermore, Jim, recycling your lie not only makes you seem dense…it also contradicts your own stated viewpoint:
You have claimed over and over that Obamacare will succeed because…just look at Masscare. Masscare is a wonderful model, you say, and because it’s so glorious (that’s at odds with the facts but facts never swerve your mind) Obama-crap will be glorious.
But here you’re telling us that the health care system screwed you.
So which is it?
And is is ESPECIALLY not just treading water when you take a more free market system where people could exercise their liberty and make choices for themselves; where their privacy was MUCH more secure, and where medical choices/decisions were between them and their doctor, and which 85% of the population was content….
…and replace that with a system that forces Federal choices and Federal dictates, is insecure in the extreme, where some Bureaucratic death panel f@ck decides what treatment you should get, at a cost to the economy of trillions…….only to FAIL to provide health care for the 4-5% who didn’t have it because it wasn’t available to them for some reason. There are smarter ways to handle that.
Don’t forget the security nightmare. Did anyone reading this successfully navigate the Obamacare website? Did you enter your SSN and a credit card number? Hackers everywhere have that information now. America is so screwed.
Yes, I entered an SSN, just as I do when I pay taxes, file W-2s and 1099s, etc. No, I didn’t enter a credit card number (that went to the Anthem site; I suppose I could have paid by check instead, but the credit card is more convenient).
You could have given them access to your bank account and got double billed like some peolle here in WA. Sorry kids Christmas is in February this year, err next year, Mommy has to wait a few months to buy presents because Obamacare double billed her and it takes months to get them to give me my money back.
Obamacare is more than a website.
No kidding. The death spiral for poor hospitals is already beginning thanks to customer satisfaction based reimbursement schedules. The elite hospitals decided to just opt out of the exchanges, so the rich will have a place to go. The only good news for most of the country is that the poorest hospital patient satisfaction scores are in NY and Chicago, so those areas will be impacted first.
I wonder if Jim has ever noticed a correlation between the price of a launch and the monopoly of NASA?
Hmmmm, maybe it is similar to the cost of health care? Nah, impossible.
“I wonder if Jim has ever noticed a correlation between the price of a launch and the monopoly of NASA?”
Jim only notices what his handlers tell him to notice.
And we all know that DN-dope and others try to point to the Nordic countries as models of how something as stupid as Obamacare can be successful……
Except, of course, when they are not:
Nordic Countries Increasingly Giving Welfare State the Cold Shoulder
As Reason’s J.D. Tuccille noted earlier today, putatitively socialist Swedes are increasingly turning to private insurance to reduce long wait times and rationed health care services. It’s not simply in medicine that Sweden is moving toward market-based models. As Johnny Munkhammar detailed in 2005’s European Dawn: After the Social Model, the country started cutting government spending as a percentage of GDP in the 1990s and that has proceeded apace.
Nor is it only Sweden that is giving a cold shoulder to the welfare state. AFP reports that throughout the Nordic countries, the size and scope of government is being cut as “nations find themselves cash-strapped.”
When her Social Democratic government took power in 2011, there was little to suggest Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt would make any dramatic changes to the country’s cherished welfare state — funded by the world’s highest tax burden.
After a centre-right government had raised the retirement age and reduced the unemployment benefits period from four to two years, “Gucci Helle” — as she is known among her detractors — went on to cut corporate taxes to 22 percent from 25 percent.
Other reforms have included requiring young people on benefits to undertake training, and withdrawing student aid to those taking too long to finish their studies.
……………..
Running out of other people’s money……history repeats itself again and again and again….
It did that by letting the insurer cherry-pick customers. Lucky for you, not so lucky for others.
You really don’t know how health insurance works, do you?
What does the cost of your insurance have to do with mine? Unless you are in Washington State, there is no comparison. Each state has a board that runs the insurance companies. That is why it varies wildly from state to state.
It’s too bad that your socialist utopia charges so much for insurance. It’s not my fault. Especially since my insurance came from a health care cooperative, not a provider that is in several states.
If you’re bitching about your cost, move to a different state, don’t force 330 million other people to do as you wish.
What does the cost of your insurance have to do with mine?
Until this year insurers were free to slice up the customer pool into different risk categories, and charge the customers in each category different prices. Now they have to offer the same price (adjusted only for age and tobacco use) to the whole pool. Before they could offer you a cheap premium because they were getting a high premium from a less-lucky customer in a higher risk pool; now you both pay the same premium, somewhere in between the two extremes.
I just explained to you why that argument is wrong. What more can I do to tell you that your problems lie in your state.
Keep believing the lie.
“Until this year insurers were free to slice up the customer pool into different risk categories, and charge the customers in each category different prices”
Oh the horror.
“Now they have to offer the same price (adjusted only for age and tobacco use) to the whole pool. ”
What is with the systemic discrimination? In your first sentence, discrimination is evil but in your next it is the moral thing to do.
“Before they could offer you a cheap premium because they were getting a high premium from a less-lucky customer in a higher risk pool;”
Well, they offered a lower premium to some people based on the probability that they would consume a certain amount of services. It didn’t come at the expense of people with more expensive policies. Some people paid less but their premiums were still subsidizing the other policy holders because insurers were paying out less to the “lucky” people. The “lucky” people were paying in and not getting anything back, meaning their premiums subsidize the rest of the insurance companies operations.
” now you both pay the same premium, somewhere in between the two extremes.”
Right, so premiums are going up due to Obamacare (something you said was normal course of business earlier). Premiums are going up for people on the bottom end of the health insurance market to subsidize richer people with better or more comprehensive plans. The key thing here is that while costs are going up for people to subsidize the care of others, it doesn’t mean costs are going down for people who are getting subsidized through the aggregation of premiums.
People who had expensive plans continue to have expensive plans and people who had affordable plans now get to have expensive plans. People who get subsidies through an exchange are being sold more expensive policies and while they are shielded from the increase in costs to some degree, it is still more expensive for us as a group to pay for.
What is with the systemic discrimination? In your first sentence, discrimination is evil but in your next it is the moral thing to do.
At least it’s now limited to something under a person’s control (tobacco use) and something that affects most everyone equally (age).
The “lucky” people were paying in and not getting anything back, meaning their premiums subsidize the rest of the insurance companies operations.
No, insurance companies set up each risk pool to be self-supporting, they don’t cross-subsidize.
You’re confusing two kinds of luck: 1) being lucky in the sense of looking good to the insurer (i.e. having a good-looking health history), and 2) being lucky in the sense of not having big medical bills while covered under a particular policy. Some of the people who are lucky in sense 1) (and therefore paid cheap premiums) will be unlucky in sense 2) — they will happen to get cancer, get hit by a bus, etc. Even a pool of previously healthy people is going to have individuals with huge expenses.
But because you’ve segregated these previously healthy people into their own risk pool, the people who’ve have poorer health histories are also clumped together in separate, higher-risk pools. Because they will, on average, have higher bills, they will pay higher premiums, even if they are subsequently totally healthy.
Premiums are going up for people on the bottom end of the health insurance market to subsidize richer people with better or more comprehensive plans.
No, the main reason premiums are going up is that people who were in low-risk pools are now in the same pool as everyone else. That’s also why premiums are going down for people (like me) who formerly were segregated into high-risk pools.
A secondary reason premiums are going up is that many old policies were very limited. Plans with higher actuarial value naturally cost more.
Jim writes:
“No, insurance companies set up each risk pool to be self-supporting, they don’t cross-subsidize.”
Today must be Make Up a Fact Day for Jim…..
At least you can now admit premiums are going up. Just a week ago you were claiming they were going down and Obamacare was saving people tons of money.
Obamacare is so great the a small business owner like Jim with a multistate company who can afford $1400 a month insurance policy needs to be subsidized. Poor people must suffer with their bronze plans with high deductibles and no prescription coverage so Jim’s Cadilac plan can be subsidized by their premiums.
Many of us like the idea of helping poor people get medical care but helping people who can pay their own way not as much. Also, Obamacare was not sold as helping well to do people like Jim pay his insurance premiums.
At least you can now admit premiums are going up.
They are, for some people, and going down for others.
Just a week ago you were claiming they were going down and Obamacare was saving people tons of money
No, I was claiming that the rate of health spending growth was going down, because it is. In time that will translate to lower premiums overall than we would have otherwise.
Poor people must suffer with their bronze plans with high deductibles and no prescription coverage so Jim’s Cadilac plan can be subsidized by their premiums
I don’t know where you get this stuff. I’ve never had a Cadillac plan. My Bronze plan isn’t subsidized, I pay the same premium as anyone else my age.
Now it’s true that when you make insurance more affordable for people with pre-existing conditions, some of the people you help are well off. Most of them aren’t.
No you were saying premiums were going down for everyone and costs were going down, not spending. You were saying discrimination based on services used was bad but on age and smoking is good. Think about that for a moment.
For the money you spent, you should have an excellent plan that far exceeds what a bronze plan offers in terms of benefits. Under the old system, $700 a month for an individual would have got you some of the best plans in WA. If you really only get a bronze plan for that much it just shows how bad Obamacare messed up the old system.
You keep contradicting yourself. First you say premiums must go up to subsidize people like you and then you say your plan isn’t subsidized.
For the money you spent, you should have an excellent plan
I agree! But I didn’t, because of price discrimination based on my health history.
Under the old system, $700 a month for an individual would have got you some of the best plans in WA.
You have a magical belief that because those plans were offered to you, they must have been available to anyone.
If you really only get a bronze plan for that much it just shows how bad Obamacare messed up the old system.
No, Obamacare fixed it. The old system offered me a renewal for $1,579/mo ($6k deductible); Healthcare.gov offered me a range of options from $770 ($12k deductible) to about $1,200 ($2k deductible). I picked a Bronze plan, $808/mo for an $11k deductible.
You are getting a little loose with the numbers. You said a plan for you and your wife was $1376 and the replacement policy was increased to $1579 under Obamacare with a 6k deductible. (What was the old deductible?) So that is a 14.7% increase in premiums alone for the same or a similar plan due to Obamacare. I am guessing there was a deductible increase as well. That doesn’t look like a fix.
Your new plan is cheaper when it comes to premiums. (Is the $808 for you and your wife?) But your new deductible is $5,000 or 83% higher than the one offered in your renewal. So not only did Obamacare raise the premiums of your old plan, your new plan comes with a significantly higher deductible. Is the trade off between a lower premium, higher deductible, and coverage changes worth it?
In the short run it might save you some money depending on what you spend on treatment every year and whether or not your prescriptions are covered but in the long run it is a gamble. Your potential costs are much higher if you get sick or injured.
We don’t have enough information to make an apples to apples comparison and have to take on faith that you really couldn’t buy any other plan before. To analyze the effects of Obamacare on costs, we have to look at the same plan before and after. It could very well be that people who had your $808 plan pre-Obamacare saw premium and/or deductible increases.
You said a plan for you and your wife was $1376 and the replacement policy was increased to $1579 under Obamacare with a 6k deductible. (What was the old deductible?)
$5k
So that is a 14.7% increase in premiums alone for the same or a similar plan due to Obamacare
It had nothing to do with Obamacare, it was the predictable year-after-year increase that I’ve gotten used to having a single-member group plan (i.e. one where the premium is based on the health risks of the one family in the plan, mine). 14.7% is actually a much smaller hike than I’ve seen in the past.
Is the $808 for you and your wife?
Yes.
But your new deductible is $5,000 or 83% higher than the one offered in your renewal. So not only did Obamacare raise the premiums of your old plan, your new plan comes with a significantly higher deductible.
You’re mixing things up. Obamacare gave me the option of a $808/mo premium instead of the $1,579/mo I would have paid otherwise. Yes, the $808 plan has a higher deductible than the $1,579 plan, but I could have gotten an <$1,000 Healthcare.gov plan with the same deductible as the $1,579 group plan. My options are much better than they were before.
It could very well be that people who had your $808 plan pre-Obamacare saw premium and/or deductible increases.
The $808 plan was created for Healthcare.gov; it didn’t exist before.
To analyze the effects of Obamacare on costs, we have to look at the same plan before and after
That’s virtually impossible, because the new Healthcare.gov plans — plans that accept anyone and base the price only on age and tobacco use — did not exist before.
Oh the horror.
Yes, the horror. Your position seems to be: if you have the good fortune to be healthy, you have a right to cheap health insurance (at least until your luck runs out). If you have the bad luck to not be healthy, tough luck — not only do you get to suffer from illness, you also will have to pay much more for health insurance, if you’re allowed to buy it at all.
It’s a bleak ethic.
There were other plans available, such as high-risk pools. There was also the offer to put people with pre-existing conditions on Medicaid.
But the democrats wouldn’t allow a single republican into the conversation. They preferred a monolithic control of 11 percent of the economy.
Yeah, thanks for that. Bleak indeed.
Jim,
No the bleak ethic is that you think I should be socked with higher costs so you don’t have to pay a higher cost. You have no natural right to make such a demand of me. We have established no working relationship with each other. You have done no work for me and I have done no work for you. Neither have we purchased any products from each other. I don’t owe you shit.
Your problems are your own and I have nothing to do with them so I expect you to keep your hands off of my money. Likewise I have no natural right to demand any of your money for my own problems.
That you sit here and say that I am lucky and therefore deserve my higher premiums now is just showing your greed for helping your own life at the expense of mine.
“It’s a bleak ethic.” Yes, we know you find the idea of a free society bleak.
Still waiting why insurance companies don’t or shouldn’t have the right to charge what they want or not to business with people they don’t want to do business. Or why people who are turned down have the right to force a company to do business with them. Or why people who can’t afford insurance have the right to force everyone else to pay for it.
Still waiting, that is, for an answer that doesn’t involve the Argument from Pity fallacy.
So you went from using flawed economics to support Obamacare to protoreligiosity. Democrats don’t have any morals so please don’t insult us by pretending Obamacare was passed due to moral convictions.
Why do insurance companies spend so much money on actuaries when according to Jim everything is just luck? You are deep into magical thinking when luck is the scientific evidence to support your POV.
Why do insurance companies spend so much money on actuaries when according to Jim everything is just luck?
Because the sum of a population’s luck is quite predictable. An actuary can’t tell which people will get cancer next year — that’s luck — but they know roughly how many will.
You cannot be so dense. Actuaries have been removed from the equation entirely.
Actuaries are still needed to estimate the claims that a given pool of customers will make, and so determine what premium to charge.
That’s luck? You might as well say gaia’s will or some other magical nonsense.
Democrats love to make up villains in order to get free stuff. It’s how they sleep at night.
What villains?
You know, the “lucky people” (like me), or the “Insurance Companies”
Or, “The rich”
Or heck, “winners of Life’s Lottery”
Just listen to an Obama speech, you’ll here quite a few. Anything will work, just as long as you redistribute the wealth and skim a bit off the top for yourself.
Here’s a villain, the EVIL COAL COMPANIES. And Steven Chu is out to stop them!
As time goes on, the reasons used to justify Obamacare when it passed are shown to be lies and are replaced with ever shifting excuses. Jim now thinks Obamacare is a religious matter, a moral imperative and that any recognition of Obamacare failures is immoral. Anyone who benefited under the old system was due to Lord Luck. He has to resort to magical thinking. More affordable plans were unicorns only available to a few people (like the six million who got booted off their policies).
Obamacare zealots denied costs were going up for people but now claim that was the plan all along in order to subsidize, not through actual subsidies but through premium and deductible increases. Nevermind that Obamacare was sold on reducing everyones costs.
Obamacare was supposed to lower premiums but it didn’t. Hey you can’t blame Obamacare for perpetuating the problems it was sold as stopping. Lost your insurance? People lost their policies all the time due to (insert some lie about the old system) so you can’t be upset about Obamacare doing it on a larger scale despite the promise of people being able to keep their plans. But those plans were all frauds with no real coverage, except they weren’t and many Obamacare compliant plans have coverage that was deemed immoral and a reason to pass Obamacare in the first place. Lost your doctor? That happened all the time under the old system. Every year people lost all their doctors can’t blame Obamacare for that even though Obama said no one would lose their doctor.
All those bad things about the old system, that are exacerbated by the new system, were used to justify Obamacare but using the standards Democrats layed out, doesn’t that mean we should get rid of Obamacare? We should hold Democrat policies to the same standard they hold others to right?
Yes. Next question tm/Instapundit
Exactly, Rand. The solution will be worse. Typical Alinski strategy. Ram it through, and when it doesn’t work, find a solution with even more government control. Not that this is really new, everybody here and anyone who paid attention knew that this was just the first step towards single-payer.
The government ratchet. It only goes one way.
Perhaps I’m naive, but I still have hope that enough people would realize how badly the Democrats screwed up with ObamaCare and would oppose using that failure as an excuse for an even more intrusive government program. How stupid would someone have to be to see this mess and think, “Man, I want some more of that!”
But then, how stupid does someone have to be to vote for Democrats in the first place? Sigh.
Suppose they gave a Health Care reform and no one came?
From what I hear (and yes, I expect to be corrected on this in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . .), no one has signed up.
Businesses were given a “bye year”, and we will see if that “can get kicked down the road — again. Many if not the plurarlity of Medicaid signups are people who would have signed up for Medicaid under the old system; most of the Exchange signups are people who had insurance and needed a replacement plan.
So maybe this isn’t the disaster that the Right Wing is trumpeting because . . . nothing much has happened. Maybe this isn’t the success the Left Wing is crowing about (Obamacare — signed, sealed, and delivering reads a bumper sticker on an expensive SUV) — maybe it amounts to “rearrangement of the deck chairs” on the Existing System.
I don’t think all the people who lost their insurance and/or doctor would say that “nothing much has happened.”
Paul, I really wish that were true. But premiums have soared. Mine went up from $110.00 a month to $343.00 a month.
I’ll be dropping my insurance at the end of the month, unless Jim can hand over the $223 a month.
$110/month is an incredible bargain. The only way insurance companies can offer a deal like that is by cherry picking the customers who are least likely to incur big medical bills. But the flip side of that cherry picking is that the leftover customers either paid exorbitant premiums, or were turned down flat.
My premium (for my wife and myself) last year was $1,376/mo. That $1,376 is what made bargains like your $110 possible.
Back in the late 90s there was an Internet retailer called ValueAmerica that had incredible bargains. I bought a Weber grill from them and it cost hundreds of dollars less than what the local dealer was asking. Then ValueAmerica closed its doors — VA had been buying market share by taking a loss on every sale, and they ran out of investor money. When that grill died years later its replacement cost twice as much. There are a couple ways to think about that: 1) Poor me, the price of gas grills has soared, or 2) Boy was I lucky to get such a good deal on that last grill.
You’ve been extremely lucky to have gotten such a bargain on insurance in the past, but now the health insurance premium lottery is closed, and everyone pays pretty much the same price. It sucks that you have to pay more than you are used to, but you won’t be paying nearly as much as the unlucky have been paying all along.
Yes Jim, please keep telling people like it is.
The old New Deal coalition was tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect. You put an increased tax burden on a smaller number of wealthy people who don’t vote for you anyway, you spread the goodies out to a larger number of less well off people, and you cruise to reelection victory.
Only the new, new deal is what, regulate and regulate, scold and scold, pass the blame and pass the blame? Our own Jim is pretty good at scolding people, and the President is especially good at scoldings. Stop your complainin’ about $343/month, because you are helping Jim and family get a great deal. I think the President should run some truth-telling TV commercials about people bellyaching about how the law is treating them and how what they are getting is for the Greater Good?
I just can’t wait for November.
You progressives. Here’s your argument: Be grateful for the feces I hand out to you.
My plan was for catastrophic insurance, it wasn’t much at all, but it was all I could afford, thanks to the egregious policies of the state governments.
Now, I’m priced out of that.
The free market made an affordable plan for me. Now the state has made it unaffordable. Thanks Jim, you know so much more than me. What ever could a little ole citizen like me do without you?
it wasn’t much at all
So the $343 vs. $110 comparison is between “not much at all” insurance and comprehensive insurance?
The free market made an affordable plan for me.
It did that by letting the insurer cherry-pick customers. Lucky for you, not so lucky for others.
Now the state has made it unaffordable.
By taking luck out of the equation.
“So the $343 vs. $110 comparison is between “not much at all” insurance and comprehensive insurance?”
Obamacare plans don’t have to be comprehensive. They don’t even have to partially cover prescriptions. Comprehensive is a worthless euphemism that does nothing to define what type of coverage people get. Comprehensive should mean more than just maternity care for men and free birth control for women.
The meme that Obamacare plans offer more benefits to the policy holder is a bunch of BS. Many of the “comprehensive” coverages don’t benefit the policy holder but rather some nebulous undefined group of others that need to be subsidized through increasing everyone’s rates.
Obamacare plans don’t have to be comprehensive. They don’t even have to partially cover prescriptions
Prescription drugs are one of the 10 essential benefits that every policy has to cover.
“Prescription drugs are one of the 10 essential benefits that every policy has to cover.”
They don’t. Sorry to burst your bubble. Did someone lie to you about what Obamacare would do? Join the club. My current Obamacare compliant policy does not cover prescriptions. Well, it does after I spend $9k. That will help…not at all.
My current Obamacare compliant policy does not cover prescriptions. Well, it does after I spend $9k.
In other words, it does cover them.
That will help…not at all.
Until you have big prescription bills — then it will be a life-saver. A round of chemo can easily run $20k.
And, Mr. Get-Even (because that is what your argument is),
The reason you paid so much isn’t because of my piddly catastrophic plan, it’s because of screwed up state-run insurance companies. It’s because of poor legislation.
But that is too much for you to figure out. You’d rather stick it to the other guy, rather than fix the system. You’d rather intensify the effect of the problem’s cause.
Your absolute lack of economic knowledge is appalling and scary.
My premium (for my wife and myself) last year was $1,376/mo.
The entirety of my medical claims for last year, family of 4 adults, 3 of them women, with vision and dental cost less than $1,300.
Jim, that you are paying 50% more than the average US annual premium isn’t something I would brag about doing. It simply shows you don’t know how to manage your own money. You telling us the best way to manage our money is absurd.
He had a latinum plated health insurance policy then downgraded it and claimed Obamacare saved him a ton of money when he could have chosen to buy a cheaper plan any time he wanted.
No, I had a high deductible HSA plan. There weren’t any significantly cheaper plans available to me — I looked.
It simply shows you don’t know how to manage your own money.
Do tell me how I should have managed my money. Gone without insurance? It isn’t like I chose that premium — it was the best available to me.
“No, I had a high deductible HSA plan. There weren’t any significantly cheaper plans available to me — I looked.”
You should have moved to Washington State. Instead of a high deductible high premium plan with no coverage you could have had a high premium low deductible plan for the same or lower premium cost with excellent coverage for prescriptions, preventative care, wide provider networks, and other things you keep saying didn’t exist under the old system.
Too bad those plans are gone now due to Obamacare.
It is rather incredible that a person who can afford $1400 a month in premiums and complains that it is too high also thinks it is a good thing that people who had more affordable plans with coverage that fit them better as individuals should have to pay more without complaint and that they should be happy that their cost increases subsidize other people who in cases like yours are perfectly able to pay their own way without people with less money subsidizing their health care.
What else is going wrong in your life Richie Rich? Pool boy didn’t get all the leafs out? Need to pass a national pool care act so that people without pools subsidize your pool cleaning expenses?
You should have moved to Washington State
The problem wasn’t my state, it was my risk pool.
Too bad those plans are gone now due to Obamacare.
For lots of people they never existed.
should have to pay more without complaint
People can complain all they want, but they should also look around and realize how good they had it. They should also remember how tenuous that position was — any change in their health status could have meant a loss of coverage or jacked-up premiums. That isn’t the case any more.
What else is going wrong in your life Richie Rich?
What is the appeal of this name calling?
Do tell me how I should have managed my money. Gone without insurance? It isn’t like I chose that premium — it was the best available to me.
It’s the best available to you because you support socialized medicine which restricts the options available.
For millions of people who lost their insurance and replaced it with more expensive plans, we do look back fondly on the old system. That is the problem with Obamacare, for the majority of people, the old system was better.
I didn’t have my policy due to luck or risk pools. It wasn’t some mystical unicorn. It was a common plan. I am a middle aged man with pre-existing conditions and some chronic health issues. My old plan was more affordable and had better coverage for me as an individual. You could have had a similar plan to mine in WA, especially for the money you spent. Actually, for the money you spent, you would have had outstanding coverage.
Which is why it is disgusting that you use this class warfare rhetoric when you could pay your own way. Now, you want poor people to subsidize your health care and you claim it is the moral thing to do.
All you have are lies and distortions about the old system and lies and distortions about the new system. Well, I have been through both and Obamacare made things worse.
And did you really just claim that it was illegal under Obamacare to raise premiums? Let me assure you that is not the case. Obama lied to you again.
I didn’t have my policy due to luck or risk pools.
How can you be so sure? It was totally legal for your insurer to discriminate based on your health history, but you think they didn’t bother?
You could have had a similar plan to mine in WA, especially for the money you spent.
Again, how can you be so sure? Your insurer was not required to offer me anything.
you use this class warfare rhetoric
Ha! You are the one engaging in class warfare here. Just look at your name-calling, and bizarre allegations about platinum-plated Cadillac plans, massage therapy and swimming pools.
I’m arguing that an ethical health insurance system does not charge people more because they have the bad luck to be at higher risk of health problems. We take this for granted in the group insurance market — everyone who gets a certain insurance policy from a big employer pays the same, regardless of their health history (or even their age!). But before the ACA the individual insurance market was a cruel lottery, where the losers are multiply punished by illness, recission, benefit caps and pricing discrimination.
Are you familiar with John Rawls’ veil of ignorance? Perform a thought experiment: if before your birth you did not know what your health history was going to be — did not know whether you’d be blessed with perfect health, or have huge health problems, or something in between — what sort of system would you choose? Would you choose one that rewards the lucky and punishes the unlucky, and then just hope you turned out to be one of the lucky ones? Or would you design a system in which the lucky subsidize the unlucky, so that chance would not play so great a role in your fate?
And did you really just claim that it was illegal under Obamacare to raise premiums?
It’s now illegal for your insurer to raise premiums on you as an individual, e.g. because you got sick. That was routine before the ACA.
$110/month is an incredible bargain. The only way insurance companies can offer a deal like that is by cherry picking the customers who are least likely to incur big medical bills.
You, um, don’t get this concept of ‘insurance’, do you?
Let me explain: you make a contract with an ‘insurance’ company where, if something bad happens, they’ll pay out per the contract, and you give them money. They decide how much money they’ll charge based on how much they’re likely to pay out. You benefit, because, although, you may pay for nothing, in the worst case you get far more than you pay them. They benefit because they skim a percentage off the top.
Hence, the people least likely to need big payments pay the least, because the ‘insurance’ company is unlikely to have to pay out large amounts of money.
‘Insurance’ is a pretty clever system, don’t you think?
I meant that “nothing much is happening” in terms of the ACA acquiring a constituency of people getting the government subsidies to purchase affordable health plans that they like to make the ACA unrepealable. As in the bumper sticker “Signed, Sealed, and Delivering” (and crammed down your throat).
You are getting a raw deal from the ACA whereas Jim is telling us he is getting a great deal. Whether the rest of us get a raw deal from the ACA, that time may come, but Jim keeps reassuring me that won’t happen.
The pro-Obamacare people, and not just Jim, in defending what they are doing are claiming that the people in your shoes are “small in number”, you know, the unavoidable small population experiencing “side effects” of a medical treatment helping many people.
My suspicion is that the people, like you and as of now being harmed by the ACA are small in number. Are there enough people in your situation to result in a blowout election in 2014? After the Romney thing, I am a political pessimist.
But the people like Jim, who are very happy with the deal from the ACA are equally small in number, and that right now the ACA is a wash. We probably have a golden opportunity just to roll back the whole thing and start over, but whether that can happen is another story.
My suspicion is that the people, like you and as of now being harmed by the ACA are small in number. Are there enough people in your situation to result in a blowout election in 2014?
Have you been paying no attention to the polls?
I’ve been looking at Rasmussen’s daily poll. It looks just like it did in 2009. The only difference is that Obama didn’t get a strong State of the Union bounce like he usually does. Looks to me analogous to trench warfare. The only way you’re getting people to budge now is if they’re fixing bayonets and having a go at the other side.
I mean Rand, who am I going to believe, you or that Fact Checker at the NYT, who unlike Glenn Kessler at the WaPo, spells Pinocchio with only one “c” and insists that the claim (by the Right) that more people have lost insurance or have gotten worse insurance than have been helped by the ACA is false.
What do I know? Someone “in authority” in the MSM is telling me that the ACA is not really all the bad (“a man, on the tee-vee, only he can’ be a man ’cause he don’ smoke the same cig-ar-ette as me!”) Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics is making the case that the ACA isn’t helping nearly as many the people as claimed. So I split the difference and say, you are both right, the ACA is harming people, but probably not as many people as claimed, and the ACA is helping people, also probably not as many people as claimed.
Unlike Mr. Cramdown, I don’t want to dismiss anyone’s personal account of being hurt by the ACA (or helped out, for all that matters). On the other hand, in the aggregate, I don’t think the ACA is really doing anything right now.
Paul, a wash isn’t good enough. If it is a wash then then Congress would have been better off doing nothing at all about the issue and instead spending their time on more pressing matters.
My suspicion is that the people, like you and as of now being harmed by the ACA are small in number. Are there enough people in your situation to result in a blowout election in 2014? After the Romney thing, I am a political pessimist.
Paul, a huge number of people are upset about ACA, because for most, rates went up – and don’t forget the millions who lost their old plans thanks to it.
Some, such as me, are now UNINSURED thanks to this awful legislation and the lying sack of maggot-infested bovine excrement currently putrefying the Oval Office. (If you like your insurance, you can keep you insurance. Period!” was Obama’s oft repeated lie). Well, me, and millions like me, lost our insurance.
I could get an Ibamacare bronze plan for about $4800 a year or so, but that’s a lot more than I was paying and would be far worse coverage. I’d had my prior coverage for over a decade, and I’ve been insured all of my adult life – until now.
So, I’m uninsured. I don’t like it, not one bit.
Will this translate to me doing all I can to support the GOP this year? Yes, absolutely, with time, and money, *UNLESS* they keep pushing Amnesty, because if they do, they aren’t getting one damn dime from me, nor will I vote for anyone who supports for it, period. (and unlike Obama, when I make a promise, it actually means something).
My advise on the GOP, don’t support the party financially. Support individual candidates if they deserve it.
“My suspicion is that the people, like you and as of now being harmed by the ACA are small in number. Are there enough people in your situation to result in a blowout election in 2014?”
Over 6 million lost their insurance. That is greater than Obama’s margin of victory but I am sure some would still vote for him anyway because they buy into the blame everyone but Obama game. To answer your question, why do you think Obama delayed the employer mandate?
Ours went from $300/month to $750/month, and our deductible increased from $2500 to $6500. We can’t afford it, so we quit insurance and our doing a Christian health ministry.
It’s your fault that you were paying so little!
Don’t worry, the dems will come after your Christian plan.
I lost my insurance. Stuck with Primera for a replacement but none of the policies had comparable deductibles. Bronze was 222% higher and silver was 289% higher. Preiums are little lower for bronze but considering the high deductible and lack of coverage for prescriptions, it isn’t a good trade off. Silver on up all have higher premiums and deductibles. Under any plan, you will hit the out of pocket cap before insurance picks up 100% of the cost.
I checked the Lifewise site in December before choosing a policy to see if my doctor was in network and it was but then in January I was informed my doctor is no longer covered. So now I get to either find a new doctor or new insurance. I’ve been a month without medicine to treat a medical condition. I wont die but this is a major pain in the ass. Other people may not be as lucky as me.
I can’t wait for Obamacare to fully kick in for everyone else. Higher costs and the chance of losing your preferred physician are just the start. Obamacare is more than a website.
Woden, I feel your pain!
Of course, we need to be sacrificed for the greater good.
Jim thinks you and I are the only people in the entire country who could buy the plans we did. We are special little snowflakes that got sweet deals from insurance companies that are well known to treat people as individuals and write one of a kind policies. And of course, it was at the expense of people like him who had better health insurance policies and who also paid a higher price.
But hey, our costs go up his go down. It feels good to subsidize Jim’s massage therapy. He can afford to pay his own way but why not give him some of my money? Jim has things in life he wants to do and my goals and ambitions should take a back seat to his.
Just shut up and subsidize one-percenter-Jim because fairness and shut up.
It feels good to subsidize Jim’s massage therapy.
Why do you write things like this?
“Why do you write things like this?”
What difference, at this point, does it make?
For something that was supposed to provide affordable insurance coverage to previously uninsured people, it appears that almost everyone enrolled so far are people who were insured but lost the coverage they were promised they could keep.
Gallup reports that the uninsured rate for U.S. adults dropped by 1.2 percentage points in January. It’s early yet, but there is evidence that the ACA is providing affordable coverage to the previously uninsured.
Um, yah, because they jumped on Medicaid, which they were eligible before the “Gimme free stuff” Act.
“ACA is providing affordable coverage to the previously uninsured.”
Except that the costs of health insurance went up. Hiding the increases through taxpayer subsidies doesn’t mean health insurance policies cost less. It does mean that Democrat donors get more money from the government though.
That is what I am saying. It appears that the claims that Obamacare is actually moving backwards by more people being cancelled than have registered on the Exchanges may be right-wing political wishful thinking, but it appears this whole thing is just “treading water” right now.
Do you think there is any hope that this whole thing just quietly goes away — by Presidential proclamation?
“It appears that the claims that Obamacare is actually moving backwards by more people being cancelled than have registered on the Exchanges may be right-wing political wishful thinking, but it appears this whole thing is just “treading water” right now.”
How blind can you be? Evidently pretty blind.
It’s not treading water when you rip people’s plans away and force them to get more expensive ones – more expensive via premiums and/or deductibles.
It’s also not treading water if they cannot keep their doctor or their hospital. Especially if they were being treated for something like cancer.
Dope.
It’s not treading water when you rip people’s plans away and force them to get more expensive ones – more expensive via premiums and/or deductibles.
That was happening every year even before Obamacare.
t’s also not treading water if they cannot keep their doctor or their hospital.
Again, coverage network changes were hardly invented by Obama. Insurers limit networks to hold down premium prices, and have been doing so for decades.
It isn’t treading water when people, for the first time, can not be turned down for coverage or charged a higher premium because of health factors out of their control. It isn’t treading water when millions of poor and near-poor people can afford insurance for the first time thanks to Medicaid expansion and subsidies. Those are enormous, historic steps forward.
That was happening every year even before Obamacare.
Sure, but not to millions of people at a time, you jerk.
Sure, but not to millions of people at a time, you jerk.
To tens of millions of people every year. When’s the last time that premiums and/or deductibles did not go up across the board? Certainly not in the last decade.
“To tens of millions of people every year.”
Might as well say hundreds of millions if you are going to make stuff up. Tens of millions would mean everyone on the private market would lose their doctor every year and that was not the case.
” When’s the last time that premiums and/or deductibles did not go up across the board?”
My deductibles were pretty steady. Premiums did go up, especially as I got older. But Obama and his advocates said Obamacare would lower costs so any claim that things are the same as they always were is a refute of the reason to pass Obamacare.
But Obama and his advocates said Obamacare would lower costs so any claim that things are the same as they always were is a refute of the reason to pass Obamacare.
Indeed, here is Obama lying to the press:
” they’re going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market. “
Obama said that because it is what people wanted to hear, but it was a lie. Now that the lie is exposed, Jim’s acting like “well of course higher premiums were expected”.
they’re going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market. “
And that’s exactly what I did.
Nothing you say has any relevance, now that I know your only goal is to get free stuff.
To paraphrase Franklin, those who sacrifice liberty for security are idiots who sell out their country.
“That was happening every year even before Obamacare.”
Obamacare was promised to lower costs. Every time you mention that this was the way under the old system, it should come with an acknowledgement that Obamacare was created to fix this problem and failed.
“Again, coverage network changes were hardly invented by Obama. ”
Yes but why is it happening at this exact point in time to people in the individual market? It is because of the effects of Obamacare in this sector of the industry. It isn’t a coincidence that the same people who lost their insurance plans are the same people who are losing their doctors.
“It isn’t treading water when people, for the first time, can not be turned down for coverage or charged a higher premium because of health factors out of their control. ”
Except people are being charged higher premiums regardless of their health factors.
” It isn’t treading water when millions of poor and near-poor people can afford insurance for the first time thanks to Medicaid expansion and subsidies.”
But the costs of those plans are higher than equivalent plans under the old system, that subsidies hide the cost increases from the individual doesn’t change that fact.
” Those are enormous, historic steps forward.”
An unnecessary government intervention into the private lives of every American. Had Obama focused on the economy, more people would have jobs that allow them to buy their own insurance. Had Obama focused on reforming the actual factors that drive costs, he would not have had to resort to price controls like Hugo Chavez going after toilet paper manufacturers.
Obamacare was promised to lower costs
And health care spending shrank as a fraction of GDP in 2012, for the first time in over a decade.
“And health care spending shrank as a fraction of GDP in 2012, for the first time in over a decade.”
Health care spending was going down prior to the passage of Obamacare. It is amazing how you deny anything negative can be caused by Obamacare yet also take credit for things that Obamacare has little if anything to do with.
Health care spending was going down prior to the passage of Obamacare.
So Obamacare passes, and health care spending growth goes down even more, and you complain that Obamacare hasn’t lowered costs?
Costs and spending are different things. Costs can go up and spending go down.
“That was happening every year even before Obamacare.”
Your obstinance in repeating this canard is almost astonishing. I say almost because we are, after all, talking about you.
you KNOW that’s a lie and yet you keep repeating it as if it’s some golden truth
you KNOW it’s a distortion of the effect of common plan rollovers.
Yes from an intensely pedantic point of view the plans ended and were replaced every year. But since there were minor changes to the plans that nobody cared about, year after year after year, the effect you are trying to convey was simply not there.
Equally important: the insured USED TO HAVE the freedom to change plans of they didn’t like what happened during the rollover.
Now they don’t.
Once again your skill is only in recycling already-proven-to-be-lies statements for some reason known only to your delusional mind.
you KNOW that’s a lie
No, I do not. I watched my premiums, deductibles and copays climb year after year. Our plan would vanish, to be replaced by new options, all of which charged more for less. Every complaint that I’ve heard made about the exchange plans could just as truthfully be leveled at the plans I’ve been buying for the last decade.
Real freedom is knowing that you will definitely qualify for a plan, you won’t be dropped or go bankrupt if you get sick, and you won’t have to pay any more than anyone else your age.
“No, I do not. I watched my premiums, deductibles and copays climb year after year. ”
You’ve already adequately proven to us that you do not understand insurance nor know how to manage your money. So it’s no surprise you were getting rolled.
Once more:
millions and millions of people had plans change every year in ways so minor that they didn’t care.
Because YOU (claim) that it changed in major ways is no justification for disrupting, ruining and distorting millions of people’s lives. Especially since it’s obvious you don’t understand the subject.
And even if you managed your money well and really understood insurance (not likely but let’s stretch our imaginations), you were in a colossal minority. 85% were totally happy with what they had.
Same colossal minority as those 47 millions begging for insurance asking only the chance to get it….
….they aren’t signing up for Obama-crap either.
Clue that socialists never seem to grasp:
You don’t destroy millions of lives to fix a problem of a very very few.
So again, your claim that since insurance changes every year, so Obama-crap isn’t doing anything, is complete delusion for the simple reason that the changes, before Obama-crap were a total non-factor.
Hate to say this Jim but the plain fact is that whatever happened to YOU personally is irrelevant.
Furthermore, Jim, recycling your lie not only makes you seem dense…it also contradicts your own stated viewpoint:
You have claimed over and over that Obamacare will succeed because…just look at Masscare. Masscare is a wonderful model, you say, and because it’s so glorious (that’s at odds with the facts but facts never swerve your mind) Obama-crap will be glorious.
But here you’re telling us that the health care system screwed you.
So which is it?
And is is ESPECIALLY not just treading water when you take a more free market system where people could exercise their liberty and make choices for themselves; where their privacy was MUCH more secure, and where medical choices/decisions were between them and their doctor, and which 85% of the population was content….
…and replace that with a system that forces Federal choices and Federal dictates, is insecure in the extreme, where some Bureaucratic death panel f@ck decides what treatment you should get, at a cost to the economy of trillions…….only to FAIL to provide health care for the 4-5% who didn’t have it because it wasn’t available to them for some reason. There are smarter ways to handle that.
Don’t forget the security nightmare. Did anyone reading this successfully navigate the Obamacare website? Did you enter your SSN and a credit card number? Hackers everywhere have that information now. America is so screwed.
Yes, I entered an SSN, just as I do when I pay taxes, file W-2s and 1099s, etc. No, I didn’t enter a credit card number (that went to the Anthem site; I suppose I could have paid by check instead, but the credit card is more convenient).
You could have given them access to your bank account and got double billed like some peolle here in WA. Sorry kids Christmas is in February this year, err next year, Mommy has to wait a few months to buy presents because Obamacare double billed her and it takes months to get them to give me my money back.
Obamacare is more than a website.
No kidding. The death spiral for poor hospitals is already beginning thanks to customer satisfaction based reimbursement schedules. The elite hospitals decided to just opt out of the exchanges, so the rich will have a place to go. The only good news for most of the country is that the poorest hospital patient satisfaction scores are in NY and Chicago, so those areas will be impacted first.
I wonder if Jim has ever noticed a correlation between the price of a launch and the monopoly of NASA?
Hmmmm, maybe it is similar to the cost of health care? Nah, impossible.
“I wonder if Jim has ever noticed a correlation between the price of a launch and the monopoly of NASA?”
Jim only notices what his handlers tell him to notice.
And we all know that DN-dope and others try to point to the Nordic countries as models of how something as stupid as Obamacare can be successful……
Except, of course, when they are not:
Nordic Countries Increasingly Giving Welfare State the Cold Shoulder
As Reason’s J.D. Tuccille noted earlier today, putatitively socialist Swedes are increasingly turning to private insurance to reduce long wait times and rationed health care services. It’s not simply in medicine that Sweden is moving toward market-based models. As Johnny Munkhammar detailed in 2005’s European Dawn: After the Social Model, the country started cutting government spending as a percentage of GDP in the 1990s and that has proceeded apace.
Nor is it only Sweden that is giving a cold shoulder to the welfare state. AFP reports that throughout the Nordic countries, the size and scope of government is being cut as “nations find themselves cash-strapped.”
When her Social Democratic government took power in 2011, there was little to suggest Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt would make any dramatic changes to the country’s cherished welfare state — funded by the world’s highest tax burden.
After a centre-right government had raised the retirement age and reduced the unemployment benefits period from four to two years, “Gucci Helle” — as she is known among her detractors — went on to cut corporate taxes to 22 percent from 25 percent.
Other reforms have included requiring young people on benefits to undertake training, and withdrawing student aid to those taking too long to finish their studies.
……………..
http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/22/nordic-countries-increasingly-giving-wel
Running out of other people’s money……history repeats itself again and again and again….
It did that by letting the insurer cherry-pick customers. Lucky for you, not so lucky for others.
You really don’t know how health insurance works, do you?
What does the cost of your insurance have to do with mine? Unless you are in Washington State, there is no comparison. Each state has a board that runs the insurance companies. That is why it varies wildly from state to state.
It’s too bad that your socialist utopia charges so much for insurance. It’s not my fault. Especially since my insurance came from a health care cooperative, not a provider that is in several states.
If you’re bitching about your cost, move to a different state, don’t force 330 million other people to do as you wish.
What does the cost of your insurance have to do with mine?
Until this year insurers were free to slice up the customer pool into different risk categories, and charge the customers in each category different prices. Now they have to offer the same price (adjusted only for age and tobacco use) to the whole pool. Before they could offer you a cheap premium because they were getting a high premium from a less-lucky customer in a higher risk pool; now you both pay the same premium, somewhere in between the two extremes.
I just explained to you why that argument is wrong. What more can I do to tell you that your problems lie in your state.
Keep believing the lie.
“Until this year insurers were free to slice up the customer pool into different risk categories, and charge the customers in each category different prices”
Oh the horror.
“Now they have to offer the same price (adjusted only for age and tobacco use) to the whole pool. ”
What is with the systemic discrimination? In your first sentence, discrimination is evil but in your next it is the moral thing to do.
“Before they could offer you a cheap premium because they were getting a high premium from a less-lucky customer in a higher risk pool;”
Well, they offered a lower premium to some people based on the probability that they would consume a certain amount of services. It didn’t come at the expense of people with more expensive policies. Some people paid less but their premiums were still subsidizing the other policy holders because insurers were paying out less to the “lucky” people. The “lucky” people were paying in and not getting anything back, meaning their premiums subsidize the rest of the insurance companies operations.
” now you both pay the same premium, somewhere in between the two extremes.”
Right, so premiums are going up due to Obamacare (something you said was normal course of business earlier). Premiums are going up for people on the bottom end of the health insurance market to subsidize richer people with better or more comprehensive plans. The key thing here is that while costs are going up for people to subsidize the care of others, it doesn’t mean costs are going down for people who are getting subsidized through the aggregation of premiums.
People who had expensive plans continue to have expensive plans and people who had affordable plans now get to have expensive plans. People who get subsidies through an exchange are being sold more expensive policies and while they are shielded from the increase in costs to some degree, it is still more expensive for us as a group to pay for.
What is with the systemic discrimination? In your first sentence, discrimination is evil but in your next it is the moral thing to do.
At least it’s now limited to something under a person’s control (tobacco use) and something that affects most everyone equally (age).
The “lucky” people were paying in and not getting anything back, meaning their premiums subsidize the rest of the insurance companies operations.
No, insurance companies set up each risk pool to be self-supporting, they don’t cross-subsidize.
You’re confusing two kinds of luck: 1) being lucky in the sense of looking good to the insurer (i.e. having a good-looking health history), and 2) being lucky in the sense of not having big medical bills while covered under a particular policy. Some of the people who are lucky in sense 1) (and therefore paid cheap premiums) will be unlucky in sense 2) — they will happen to get cancer, get hit by a bus, etc. Even a pool of previously healthy people is going to have individuals with huge expenses.
But because you’ve segregated these previously healthy people into their own risk pool, the people who’ve have poorer health histories are also clumped together in separate, higher-risk pools. Because they will, on average, have higher bills, they will pay higher premiums, even if they are subsequently totally healthy.
Premiums are going up for people on the bottom end of the health insurance market to subsidize richer people with better or more comprehensive plans.
No, the main reason premiums are going up is that people who were in low-risk pools are now in the same pool as everyone else. That’s also why premiums are going down for people (like me) who formerly were segregated into high-risk pools.
A secondary reason premiums are going up is that many old policies were very limited. Plans with higher actuarial value naturally cost more.
Jim writes:
“No, insurance companies set up each risk pool to be self-supporting, they don’t cross-subsidize.”
Today must be Make Up a Fact Day for Jim…..
At least you can now admit premiums are going up. Just a week ago you were claiming they were going down and Obamacare was saving people tons of money.
Obamacare is so great the a small business owner like Jim with a multistate company who can afford $1400 a month insurance policy needs to be subsidized. Poor people must suffer with their bronze plans with high deductibles and no prescription coverage so Jim’s Cadilac plan can be subsidized by their premiums.
Many of us like the idea of helping poor people get medical care but helping people who can pay their own way not as much. Also, Obamacare was not sold as helping well to do people like Jim pay his insurance premiums.
At least you can now admit premiums are going up.
They are, for some people, and going down for others.
Just a week ago you were claiming they were going down and Obamacare was saving people tons of money
No, I was claiming that the rate of health spending growth was going down, because it is. In time that will translate to lower premiums overall than we would have otherwise.
Poor people must suffer with their bronze plans with high deductibles and no prescription coverage so Jim’s Cadilac plan can be subsidized by their premiums
I don’t know where you get this stuff. I’ve never had a Cadillac plan. My Bronze plan isn’t subsidized, I pay the same premium as anyone else my age.
Now it’s true that when you make insurance more affordable for people with pre-existing conditions, some of the people you help are well off. Most of them aren’t.
No you were saying premiums were going down for everyone and costs were going down, not spending. You were saying discrimination based on services used was bad but on age and smoking is good. Think about that for a moment.
For the money you spent, you should have an excellent plan that far exceeds what a bronze plan offers in terms of benefits. Under the old system, $700 a month for an individual would have got you some of the best plans in WA. If you really only get a bronze plan for that much it just shows how bad Obamacare messed up the old system.
You keep contradicting yourself. First you say premiums must go up to subsidize people like you and then you say your plan isn’t subsidized.
For the money you spent, you should have an excellent plan
I agree! But I didn’t, because of price discrimination based on my health history.
Under the old system, $700 a month for an individual would have got you some of the best plans in WA.
You have a magical belief that because those plans were offered to you, they must have been available to anyone.
If you really only get a bronze plan for that much it just shows how bad Obamacare messed up the old system.
No, Obamacare fixed it. The old system offered me a renewal for $1,579/mo ($6k deductible); Healthcare.gov offered me a range of options from $770 ($12k deductible) to about $1,200 ($2k deductible). I picked a Bronze plan, $808/mo for an $11k deductible.
You are getting a little loose with the numbers. You said a plan for you and your wife was $1376 and the replacement policy was increased to $1579 under Obamacare with a 6k deductible. (What was the old deductible?) So that is a 14.7% increase in premiums alone for the same or a similar plan due to Obamacare. I am guessing there was a deductible increase as well. That doesn’t look like a fix.
Your new plan is cheaper when it comes to premiums. (Is the $808 for you and your wife?) But your new deductible is $5,000 or 83% higher than the one offered in your renewal. So not only did Obamacare raise the premiums of your old plan, your new plan comes with a significantly higher deductible. Is the trade off between a lower premium, higher deductible, and coverage changes worth it?
In the short run it might save you some money depending on what you spend on treatment every year and whether or not your prescriptions are covered but in the long run it is a gamble. Your potential costs are much higher if you get sick or injured.
We don’t have enough information to make an apples to apples comparison and have to take on faith that you really couldn’t buy any other plan before. To analyze the effects of Obamacare on costs, we have to look at the same plan before and after. It could very well be that people who had your $808 plan pre-Obamacare saw premium and/or deductible increases.
You said a plan for you and your wife was $1376 and the replacement policy was increased to $1579 under Obamacare with a 6k deductible. (What was the old deductible?)
$5k
So that is a 14.7% increase in premiums alone for the same or a similar plan due to Obamacare
It had nothing to do with Obamacare, it was the predictable year-after-year increase that I’ve gotten used to having a single-member group plan (i.e. one where the premium is based on the health risks of the one family in the plan, mine). 14.7% is actually a much smaller hike than I’ve seen in the past.
Is the $808 for you and your wife?
Yes.
But your new deductible is $5,000 or 83% higher than the one offered in your renewal. So not only did Obamacare raise the premiums of your old plan, your new plan comes with a significantly higher deductible.
You’re mixing things up. Obamacare gave me the option of a $808/mo premium instead of the $1,579/mo I would have paid otherwise. Yes, the $808 plan has a higher deductible than the $1,579 plan, but I could have gotten an <$1,000 Healthcare.gov plan with the same deductible as the $1,579 group plan. My options are much better than they were before.
It could very well be that people who had your $808 plan pre-Obamacare saw premium and/or deductible increases.
The $808 plan was created for Healthcare.gov; it didn’t exist before.
To analyze the effects of Obamacare on costs, we have to look at the same plan before and after
That’s virtually impossible, because the new Healthcare.gov plans — plans that accept anyone and base the price only on age and tobacco use — did not exist before.
Oh the horror.
Yes, the horror. Your position seems to be: if you have the good fortune to be healthy, you have a right to cheap health insurance (at least until your luck runs out). If you have the bad luck to not be healthy, tough luck — not only do you get to suffer from illness, you also will have to pay much more for health insurance, if you’re allowed to buy it at all.
It’s a bleak ethic.
There were other plans available, such as high-risk pools. There was also the offer to put people with pre-existing conditions on Medicaid.
But the democrats wouldn’t allow a single republican into the conversation. They preferred a monolithic control of 11 percent of the economy.
Yeah, thanks for that. Bleak indeed.
Jim,
No the bleak ethic is that you think I should be socked with higher costs so you don’t have to pay a higher cost. You have no natural right to make such a demand of me. We have established no working relationship with each other. You have done no work for me and I have done no work for you. Neither have we purchased any products from each other. I don’t owe you shit.
Your problems are your own and I have nothing to do with them so I expect you to keep your hands off of my money. Likewise I have no natural right to demand any of your money for my own problems.
That you sit here and say that I am lucky and therefore deserve my higher premiums now is just showing your greed for helping your own life at the expense of mine.
“It’s a bleak ethic.” Yes, we know you find the idea of a free society bleak.
Still waiting why insurance companies don’t or shouldn’t have the right to charge what they want or not to business with people they don’t want to do business. Or why people who are turned down have the right to force a company to do business with them. Or why people who can’t afford insurance have the right to force everyone else to pay for it.
Still waiting, that is, for an answer that doesn’t involve the Argument from Pity fallacy.
So you went from using flawed economics to support Obamacare to protoreligiosity. Democrats don’t have any morals so please don’t insult us by pretending Obamacare was passed due to moral convictions.
Why do insurance companies spend so much money on actuaries when according to Jim everything is just luck? You are deep into magical thinking when luck is the scientific evidence to support your POV.
Why do insurance companies spend so much money on actuaries when according to Jim everything is just luck?
Because the sum of a population’s luck is quite predictable. An actuary can’t tell which people will get cancer next year — that’s luck — but they know roughly how many will.
You cannot be so dense. Actuaries have been removed from the equation entirely.
Actuaries are still needed to estimate the claims that a given pool of customers will make, and so determine what premium to charge.
That’s luck? You might as well say gaia’s will or some other magical nonsense.
Democrats love to make up villains in order to get free stuff. It’s how they sleep at night.
What villains?
You know, the “lucky people” (like me), or the “Insurance Companies”
Or, “The rich”
Or heck, “winners of Life’s Lottery”
Just listen to an Obama speech, you’ll here quite a few. Anything will work, just as long as you redistribute the wealth and skim a bit off the top for yourself.
Here’s a villain, the EVIL COAL COMPANIES. And Steven Chu is out to stop them!
Too bad, he’s the villain: http://freebeacon.com/former-energy-secretary-joins-board-of-stimulus-recipient/
As time goes on, the reasons used to justify Obamacare when it passed are shown to be lies and are replaced with ever shifting excuses. Jim now thinks Obamacare is a religious matter, a moral imperative and that any recognition of Obamacare failures is immoral. Anyone who benefited under the old system was due to Lord Luck. He has to resort to magical thinking. More affordable plans were unicorns only available to a few people (like the six million who got booted off their policies).
Obamacare zealots denied costs were going up for people but now claim that was the plan all along in order to subsidize, not through actual subsidies but through premium and deductible increases. Nevermind that Obamacare was sold on reducing everyones costs.
Obamacare was supposed to lower premiums but it didn’t. Hey you can’t blame Obamacare for perpetuating the problems it was sold as stopping. Lost your insurance? People lost their policies all the time due to (insert some lie about the old system) so you can’t be upset about Obamacare doing it on a larger scale despite the promise of people being able to keep their plans. But those plans were all frauds with no real coverage, except they weren’t and many Obamacare compliant plans have coverage that was deemed immoral and a reason to pass Obamacare in the first place. Lost your doctor? That happened all the time under the old system. Every year people lost all their doctors can’t blame Obamacare for that even though Obama said no one would lose their doctor.
All those bad things about the old system, that are exacerbated by the new system, were used to justify Obamacare but using the standards Democrats layed out, doesn’t that mean we should get rid of Obamacare? We should hold Democrat policies to the same standard they hold others to right?