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Could healthcare premium increases affect the election?

Siro said:
There is no need. ACA's biggest failure is that it is only a half-measure. People should be fined an amount equal to health insurance costs for a year if they fail to buy insurance (which premiums would be capped). Currently, the law is garbage. Insurance profits aren't seriously regulated. People can get out of buying insurance. The premiums aren't capped. It's like a skeletal framework for an actually useful policy.
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Charging a penalty that size would be found unconstitutional. Failure to purchase insurance results in a tax, not a penalty, and that is why the Sup. Ct. ruled the provision to be constitutional. And insurance profits are regulated, the ACA imposes a medical loss ratio on all insurers. Tell the insurance companies that are losing money and going into bankruptcy (in Moda's case) due to the ACA that their profits aren't regulated (Aetna, Moda, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, United)Part if this is due to the additional claims by those not paying in (see next paragraph). With few exceptions, the ACA requires insurers to spend 80%/85% (small, individual/large market) of their premiums sans taxes and fees on medical costs. Add in overhead and broker fees and profits are slim to none.

The problem is, the ACA turned an insurance program (cost/risk sharing among members) into something different. Under the ACA, there are no exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Why pay for insurance every month when you can just sign up for insurance after you have something bad happen? Why pay for homeowners insurance every month if you can just purchase it after your house burns down? The result is a burden to the system caused by sick people that never paid in. So the program is an additional tax for those of us with insurance, and a burden to the insurance companies that have sick people signing up and needing immediate care.

Another issue, and to me, the biggest, is how much we pay for medical care in this country (medical goods, drugs, etc.) compared to what the rest of the world pays. Many other countries have single-payer systems, and those countries restrict reimbursements. We are a small portion of the drug and durable medical good companies total customer base, but we provide them with the lion share of their profits. It needs to stop.

Employer provided coverage must also provide minimum coverage and be affordable, but only for the employee (not their dependents/spouse). So while the ACA provides protection for reasonable employee coverage, the costs aren't capped for your family. My insurance is free, but to add my wife and child it would be $1,000/mo. So we go to the exchange for them, and have had to switch our insurer three years in a row due to insurers leaving the exchange. This has caused my family to find new doctors, etc.
 
Gameface said:
Bring on single payer! I'm primed and ready.
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America's in a no win situation until single payer is back on the table, and congress unanimously quits pretending it's not a viable option. I know it's not that simple, but we have to have a united goal. I don't feel like we do.

We could play the blame game, but regardless of fault it's an outright embarrassment not to have healthcare covered.
 
str8line said:
We got our family insurance increase over the weekend and we are going from $888/month to $1576 for a family of four under the Obamacare exchange. Other friends of mine have posted similar increases on Facebook. These increases are currently being rolled out in the 39 states that participate in the federal insurance exchange. The republican healthcare platform promises to work from day one on repealing Obamacare.

Could this issue possibly hand the election to republicans in tight races? The timing is pretty bad for the dems. Could Obamacare be repealed by congress even under Clinton?
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I was on Obamacare exchanges for six months an it was as affective as swallowing bleach.
 
The frustrating thing about healthcare in our country is just how unbelievably expensive it is compared to the rest of the world. When 17.5% of our GDP goes to healthcare, we obviously have a problem. Many other comparable countries sit in the 10-12% range. When our GDP is over 18 Trillion, we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that are spent inefficiently in our economy every year.
 
franklin said:
One Brow posted a few years ago that we will see a German style system where the government contracts out single payer to private insurance industries. I don't know if that is how Germany actually operates but he's always thorough so I take his word for it. I think that model would be an easier sell to the capitalist republicans and would more than pacify the democrats. It's still market based (rolls eyes) and covers everybody.

Single payer could be a boon for our economy. I wonder what the conservative pundits would blame then.
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That is pretty close. There are 2 government subsidized major insurers in Germany. Most people have their insurance through one of them and it is paid by a combination of taxes, employee contribution, and company contribution. If you make over a certain threshold in income you are allowed to choose a "private" insurance company and then you pay the difference, which is usually substantial. In the end, more comes out of your check (of course average wages, adjusted for cost of living, etc. are higher there) and far far less out of your pocket (no to very little deductible). They also oversee the "cost" of healthcare, including limited litigation, which keeps the cost down dramatically. The only time we paid something out of pocket was for an MRI my wife had to have to find out she has hip displasia, and the subsequent physical therapy. Also for a brief hospital stay my son had there due to epilepsy. The MRI was 50 euros, the PT was 15 euros per session and the hospital stay was 10 euros per night. I would trade our healthcare system for Germany's in a heartbeat. It isn't perfect either but it is far superior to ours.
 
Cunning Linguist said:
I think I only pay like $275/month for healthcare for me and my family.
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fishonjazz said:
I pay around $330 or so per month.
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Both of those are pretty low unless it is a very high deductible plan. Most places I have worked and been interviewing with are in the $300 per paycheck range for a family plan, and that is usually for a high deductible HSA qualified plan. It goes up drastically from there if better plans are even offered.
 
Harambe said:
America's in a no win situation until single payer is back on the table, and congress unanimously quits pretending it's not a viable option. I know it's not that simple, but we have to have a united goal. I don't feel like we do.

We could play the blame game, but regardless of fault it's an outright embarrassment not to have healthcare covered.
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What do you know, you are a gorilla. Someone should shoot you.









Too soon?
 
The idea behind ACA was to make sure that young, healthy people paid into the system to cover sick people (the way all insurance works). To accomplish that goal, it probably was an error in making children covered under parents' plans until age 26. But young and healthy people are apparently paying the penalty as it is cheaper than getting the insurance. If you get sick, then you get insurance. It's making the system unworkable.

If the ACA is abolished, sick people will not be able to get insurance again (pre-existing conditions) unless they can get it through their employment. Preventative screenings will go down as they will no longer be covered 100%. It seems likely that fewer people will want to get a colonoscopy when they will have to pay several hundred dollars to do so, or even a flu shot or mammogram. This will result in more bankruptcies, more welfare, higher costs, etc.

I don't know what the answer is. We expect to be cured and/or kept alive as long as possible no matter how grave our diseases, and we want access to the best medicines and procedures. I'm not faulting anyone for this as I am one of the chronically ill who has had a lot of expensive tests (although my ongoing drain on the system is slight as my condition is incurable with few treatment options).
 
Just found out my premiums are going up another $4500/yr, and that's with a $6500 deductible. That's best case...if I make more money, I'll get less benefits (I was right at the border last year), which seems nice bc I'll be making more money, but I'll end up spending more. Have to love a system that makes you want to earn less so you get more.
 
I like some of the steps that Obama care took in the right direction but they also compromised and took some steps backwards. Personally I think that health care and its costs wont be fixed in this country until we eliminate the insurance companies that drive costs through the roof and add very little except for distributing the costs to everyone by taking a large chunk of that money.

I personally am part of the failure of the Obama care. I do not have insurance and refuse to pay that kind of money for insurance when I almost never go to the doctor. The times I have needed to go for medical help the cost is significantly lower when I pay in cash at the time of the visit. My last ER bill for cutting off a finger was 1/4 the price when I negotiated to pay in cash before leaving. Also there are easy ways to get out of paying the penalty for not having insurance. I do not like the government requiring me to have insurance that is ridiculously over priced. Universal health care would be so much better and less expensive. It would also allow us to solve some other problems. The health care industry could still act privately and compete with each other to create better health care at a much much lower cost. The other solution I like less but I would prefer to what we have now is take the government completely out of health care, besides in a few regulations.
 
Broncster said:
I like some of the steps that Obama care took in the right direction but they also compromised and took some steps backwards. Personally I think that health care and its costs wont be fixed in this country until we eliminate the insurance companies that drive costs through the roof and add very little except for distributing the costs to everyone by taking a large chunk of that money.

I personally am part of the failure of the Obama care. I do not have insurance and refuse to pay that kind of money for insurance when I almost never go to the doctor. The times I have needed to go for medical help the cost is significantly lower when I pay in cash at the time of the visit. My last ER bill for cutting off a finger was 1/4 the price when I negotiated to pay in cash before leaving. Also there are easy ways to get out of paying the penalty for not having insurance. I do not like the government requiring me to have insurance that is ridiculously over priced. Universal health care would be so much better and less expensive. It would also allow us to solve some other problems. The health care industry could still act privately and compete with each other to create better health care at a much much lower cost. The other solution I like less but I would prefer to what we have now is take the government completely out of health care, besides in a few regulations.
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Hard to disagree with this.
 
Another problem that will have to address is litigation. That Is a much bigger cost in the US than most other countries.
 
JustTheTip said:
Just found out my premiums are going up another $4500/yr, and that's with a $6500 deductible. That's best case...if I make more money, I'll get less benefits (I was right at the border last year), which seems nice bc I'll be making more money, but I'll end up spending more. Have to love a system that makes you want to earn less so you get more.
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So to pay for this, I need to come up with another $4500. Let's say I get a raise, I'd need something like a $6-7k raise (bc of taxes) to pay for this. Problem is, then I make too much so bye bye assistance. Without assistance, my premiums cost $10,800 a year. So I'd need basically a $15k raise (again, I'm estimating my math here) just to pay for my premiums and be in the same place I'm in now.

We've created a system where there's no incentive to do better! Why work harder, earn more money when it doesn't do me any good? What a bunch of ****. They just want us to be on the teat of the government bc it's a guaranteed vote for the enablers.
 
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