@Midwest67 But I was quoting a Gold, 1k deductible, and partly replying to ucbalumnus’s price look. Other plans bring cost down, albeit with compromises. Yes, it’s a mess. And it takes some savvy to navigate. None of us know for certain what our health issues will be, in 2017.
Re: #718
http://coveraz.org/plan-explorer/ shows the following for a 85001 ZIP code and $100,000 income:
Individual age 50, excellent health: 4 plans, monthly premium of $623 to $923.
Family age 50, 50, 17, 13, excellent health: 4 plans, monthly premium of $1,688 to $2,503.
However, all of the above are from one company (Health Net).
https://www.healthcare.gov/ does not seem to let you shop for plans without creating an account to buy one.
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/12/republican-health-reform-ideas-obamacare-unlikely-work-000252 is an opinion from the former health commissioner of Rhode Island, where they tried something that resembled ACA with guaranteed issue but without an individual mandate. Not surprisingly, it failed due to adverse selection.
We were frantic trying to figure out an insurance plan for D after she aged off our family plan. It was a mess trying to find her coverage or get her to remain on our plan as disabled dependent. It took many many long months and my US Senator, my insurer and me to finally get her application resolved and her covered. In the meantime we were getting huge bills from Stanford and they were starting to mention sending it to collections, tho we explained the situation and kept them informed the entire time. It was VERY stressful!
HImom, BTDT. But then I thought we were beginning to join the civilized world. Now we’re heading back to the third world, it looks like.
“Sit right at the edge of the poverty level (I used 45k) and it’s 724.”
That’s not the edge of the poverty level. The federal poverty level for a family for 4 is about $25,000.
Right, I should’ve said roughly 400%. One person.
You got it @ucbalumnus . In AZ…one vendor in Phoenix…Healthnet. Four plans. But all HMO plans.
On the individual exchange plans…my kid has yet to find a doctor who takes the plan.
Wonderful.
[Health Net’s web site](ProviderSearch | Health Net) suggests that there are 315 family, general, or internal medicine physicians taking new patients in the Phoenix area who are in the Ambetter HMO network (Health Net Ambetter plans are the four individual plans offered there).
To clear up what Hanna and lookingforward are saying, the ACA subsidies cut off abruptly at 400% of the federal poverty level. If I were a single woman earning $47,520 a year, in my area I’d get about a $5000/year subsidy. If I earned $47,521, I’d get nothing.
Whether the ACA is repealed on Jan. 21, or some time later, or never, insurers need to be required to publish accurate provider lists.
I don’t know about everyone else, but on the planet that I live on most of the people who are making around $100,000 and have to pay $25,000 in insurance premiums plus out-of-pocket medical costs pretty much do one thing if they are healthy: they drop their insurance and they pray they don’t get really sick.
The extra $12,000 in premium increases in the last few years forced many of them off their insurance. In exchange, a few million previously uninsurable people got insurance. The question I have is this: did the unsubsidized people in the individual market bear a lot of the brunt of the cost of the ACA exchanges?
There are a couple million upper middle class families who are completely volcanic about this issue. They view this as being forced to gamble with their children’s lives. One guess as to how they voted. The press isn’t interested in covering this, but you can talk to an insurance broker who deals in the individual market if you know one.
Pretty much everyone I know who makes 100k gets insurance through an employer and it is nowhere near 25k for the premium.
The press absolutely covers people who claim not to be able to afford “Obamacare” so I’m not sure if I just consume different press than you or what
Well… health insurance on the individual market is somewhat higher than what companies pay, but it’s not radically higher. It might be 20% higher; it’s not 300% higher. So if Facebook is paying $X to insure someone, why should that person be entitled to insurance for $X/3 if they quit? Why were they ever ?
I’m going to laugh so hard when those volcanic families find out what happens when the ACA is repealed.
I’m talking about self-employed people, not people who quit or were fired. That’s why it’s only a couple million families instead of 14 million families. In some professions it is quite commonplace to be self-employed.
This doesn’t affect me personally, but I’ve been involved with this and can sympathize with the problems. A couple self-employed friends of mine rent office space from us. Our benefits people have tried to help them, but there aren’t any good solutions in our region.
That’s not nice. These people are acting out of desperation. Many of them are already going without insurance. They don’t think it can get much worse. What’s going to happen if/when ACA is repealed? They’re going to lose insurance they don’t have? You might not care all that much, but I guess I’m more empathetic since I know them.
There are many people who are self-employed, which means that they pick up the entire tab for themselves.
There probably are employers who pay nearly that much for family plans for employees who do not know the full price. Then when employees depart, they are shocked by the premiums of COBRA coverage.
Where I work, there are also independent contractors and consultants who are paid well. But the rates that they charge are much higher than the pay rate they would get as employees, in part to cover having to buy their own benefits, including medical insurance.
Having once bought individual insurance in the pre-ACA days, I am not a fan of how medical underwriting was done. I had few medical needs and procedures, but it was still not that easy to remember everything when answering the medical underwriting questions. People who have had more medical stuff may have an even harder time remembering the correct answers (though people who have had lots of medical stuff may have been denied for pre-existing conditions). Also, some medical underwriting questions had gray areas. For example, “have you ever not followed a physician’s recommendation?”. What if you did not take the prescribed opiod narcotic pain medication as instructed because you did not feel that the pain was enough to need it? Questions like these seem like a trap – answer “yes” to cover a benign case like this and you get denied, answer “no” and get rescinded later for not being truthful.
I understand that we’re talking about people who were always self-employed, but if they are now charged similar premiums to what employers would have to pay to insure them, but before the ACA they were paying half or less of what insurers would have had to pay to insure them, why would we think the earlier premium cost was right and just and now they are being saddled with an unfair burden?
I guess I’m saying that insurance prices are high because health care prices are high. There’s no magic here.
It’s also not nice to take health care away from millions of poor people. IMO.