<p>Jest is always truth based. It will be a reality when dust settles on the insurance plans and prices.</p>
<p>From what people are saying Minnesota Twin cities seems to have some of the best plans. It is quite possible Texas is right behind.</p>
<p>Just like following good school districts? Is the inner city going to be a loser or winner?</p>
<p>We moved to inner city for better schools!</p>
<p>Maybe this will create exodus from suburbs then. Dang, I was planning to stay in the suburb.</p>
<p>Sarah Klift, at Wonkblog at the Washington Post, has been doing some excellent work on the ACA rollout. Here’s her latest, on grandfathered plans.</p>
<p>[This</a> is why Obamacare is canceling some people?s insurance plans](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/29/this-is-why-obamacare-is-cancelling-some-peoples-insurance-plans/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein]This”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/29/this-is-why-obamacare-is-cancelling-some-peoples-insurance-plans/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein)</p>
<p>I am not so sure Igloo. I have encouraged some of my friends and relatives in town to do it but none followed our lead. We moved about 8 years ago and credit our daughters’ success to the move (they would have done relatively well but might not have pushed themselves to excel?). The bigger school districts have some big schools with a lot of different options and some magnet/vanguard schools too. Suburbian school districts started emulating lately but at the time we moved, they were content to have a bunch of schools, all doing the same thing.</p>
<p>That is a very informative link, janesmith. One notable thing, the cancellation policy that they showed an example of, didn’t even read like a cancellation notice. It was not even remotely clear, it just sounded like you had new options and should check out the marketplace, not that they were cancelling your policy! I wonder how many people have gotten these and didn’t even realize they were losing the policy they had.</p>
<p>texas, IDK I attrubute my kid’s success to the suburban school system.</p>
<p>What I don’t like is that they are trying to minimize the number of people affected by the cancellation, it’s ONLY 5%, etc. Funny thing is that’s about what they expect who’d enroll through the exchange, isn’t it? There was a guy on PBS the other night an MIT prof or something kept repeating they are small numbers, only 5%, brushing the objection away.</p>
<p>The whole point of the plans that are being cancelled is that they were not adequate policies. If the cancellation notices are not clear, perhaps the insurance companies are doing what they can to keep those customers, by giving them other options. Of course they have the option of going with another provider, but the insurance companies don’t want that. It doesn’t even have to be a question of whether the policy was grandfathered or not, because the insurance company could have chosen to discontinue that particular policy for other reasons.</p>
<p>Not adequate and not ACA compliant are not necessarily the same thing. This is the fine print that virtually no-one read. That’s not political, it’s reality.</p>
<p>“The whole point of the plans that are being cancelled is that they were not adequate policies”</p>
<p>I’m wondering if, when Webster dictionary puts out their latest revision, instead of the definition of “adequate” being: “of a quality that is good or acceptable”, they will revise it to: “of a quality that is good or acceptable by the government”. Then, this would all make much more sense.</p>
<p>Not adequate?
The only difference I can find between my cancelled blue cross plan and the obama care plan I will replace it with is that the old plan covered my town’s hospital and the new plan does not.</p>
<p>My plan is cancelled for one reason. Obama Care.</p>
<p>
That is because, from one perspective, they weren’t.</p>
<p>Every now and then, my employer makes changes to our health coverage - changing details or even providers. They don’t present it as “we are cancelling your policy” because that gives the impression that you no longer HAVE a policy. But we still do, it has just changed.</p>
<p>The same thing is going on here. These people have not suddenly been denied coverage, their provider simply decided NOT to maintain their grandfathered plan (which is NOT up to the government) and so they need to replace it with something else. In other words, this is approximately the same letter you would have received if your provider had decided to tweak their coverage in ANY meaningful way (like a change in co-pays).</p>
<p>And as others are noting, the reason these grandfathered plans are not okay under ACA is because they were (as a whole) bad plans. They were plans that (generally) omitted so much coverage that people using those plans became parasites on the system when something went wrong.</p>
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<p>There’s a lot of really strong language used on this thread.</p>
<p>Let me say that I don’t consider those to be getting subsidies, or those with pre-existing conditions to be parasites, but given that somebody is paying for all of this, under the above definition they are now parasites on the system.</p>
<p>I predict the employer plans will be going up in price significantly, now that they are not allowed to be capped… Unless the employer plans are allowed to remain capped? </p>
<p>I suspect, given the timing of the elections, that this is the real reason for the delay of the employer mandate, this and the fact that when the prices go up, which they will, under this system, most employers under fifty will drop insurance.</p>
<p>I also believe that with everything going on, there is going to be a lot of resentment on the part of taxpayers paying for special cadillac plans for government employees. </p>
<p>It’s not over. This is just the beginning, and it starts with some of us. The price pressure is going to come from the groups.</p>
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<p>Where is there any evidence of that???</p>
<p>“I predict the employer plans will be going up in price significantly, now that they are not allowed to be capped… Unless the employer plans are allowed to remain capped?”</p>
<p>Most large group employer plans have been ACA compliant for years, with the only exception being the life time cap. That is why they are so expensive (if you add up employee share of cost and employer share of cost.) </p>
<p>These plans will no longer be able to be capped and very few could even fall under the grandfather clause because the plans change every year - usually added benefits (for instance my plan went from not covering fertility treatments to covering them,) and co-pays and employee premiums change yearly, also. </p>
<p>Since it’s really only the lifetime cap which will change, I don’t think these plans will go up much - besides the usual increase in employee premiums and co-pay, which happen yearly, or every few years. </p>
<p>There also might be a tax issue if the cost of the benefit is going to be considered as income. </p>
<p>OTOH, small group policies will likely see significant increases as a lot of their plans have not been ACA compliant.</p>
<p>
I think I was misunderstood here. I am not calling those receiving subsidies to be parasites, nor those with pre-existing conditions. The parasitism I was referring to is the excessive and avoidable costs resulting from uninsured or underinsured people using the system in medically inappropriate ways - delaying “cheap” medical care because it is not covered under a “catastrophic care” plan thereby resulting in far greater expenses when the condition deteriorates, expenses that may not be recoupable and get spread through the system.</p>
<p>A major point of ACA was to lower the costs of medical care overall by ensuring that it was affordable for insured individuals to address medical problems before they became catastrophic. Many of the now-unsellable plans were gambles that were often lost, and while no gambler thinks they are going to lose, we (the house) need to be realistic and play the odds.</p>
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<p>Report from Forbes on HHS estimates disagrees:</p>
<p>"Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains what’s called a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection.</p>
<p>“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013."</p>
<p>[Obama</a> Officials In 2010: 93 Million Americans Will Be Unable To Keep Their Health Plans Under Obamacare - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/]Obama”>Obama Officials In 2010: 93 Million Americans Will Be Unable To Keep Their Health Plans Under Obamacare)</p>
<p>So, how does making everyone pay for a list of ten services that they may neither need nor want save money? Pediatric dental care. Really?</p>
<p>Argbargy, I said most plans will not be grandfather. </p>
<p>“These plans will no longer be able to be capped and very few could even fall under the grandfather clause because the plans change every year.”</p>
<p>But just because they won’t be grandfathered does not mean the costs are going to increase that much since they already covered almost all of the provisions to be ACA compliant. </p>
<p>They are no more going to be cancelled than the individual policies - they just have to be changed. In the instance of large group employers the only thing needed to be added will be the removal of the lifetime cap.</p>