<p>Gourmet, is that an individual plan, or a group plan? If it’s a group plan, is it possible that your age pool previously “brought down” your own premium? Because my employer group plan is $1128/mo family…for a 2,000 family deductible and 10k out of pocket maximum (for the family.) If we were keeping it, my agent predicted a age-rating hit for h and I and was estimating about a 25% increase.</p>
<p>The new individual plan of similar structure but with HSA is $1226 – so not a huge hike.</p>
<p>I’m in Michigan, but your $637 sounds really low for any employer plan I know. Is there perhaps a shift in employer/employee cost sharing?</p>
<p>The cancellations are not a California only issue. California is just bigger, that’s all.</p>
<p>And to those saying price hikes would have happened anyway and cancellations happen all the time it seems unlikely that all of this is a coincidence and a private business would never triple prices and expect to keep customers. This was planned and these people were misled. That is a fact and at this point I don’t even hear anyone denying it, anymore.</p>
<p>No wonder premium is increasing so much. 15 million people are helping 50 million previously uninsured people. And many of them are costly people to insure with preexisting conditions. And people say the 15 million minorities should suck it up for the greater good while they are asked to pay for them. How does that work? They should have spread the burden widely and include those with employer provided care.</p>
<p>That 50-million number is very misleading, even if true since it includes many perfectly healthy people who chose to not buy insurance. It doesn’t even mean they didn’t get health care. They are many fee for service clinics that treat the uninsured for reasonable prices.</p>
<p>Yes. of course, they could get some horrible disease but if that happened every day insurance as a concept would fail.</p>
<p>I think the key, Igloo, lies in the continuously looped talking point, “It’s a very small number of people who are affected by this… blah, blah, blah.”</p>
<p>They are banking on nobody caring about those 15 million. Plus many who are getting subsidies.</p>
<p>OTOH, the truth is that they also expect 45-65% of the employer insurance market to have this same issue. Most employer plans are capped and will no longer be ACA compliant. </p>
<p>The other thing is that insurance companies aren’t going to offer special employer plans since they have to spend 80% on care and can only keep 20%. They are going to offer the same plans to employers as to the individual markets to bring down their adminstrative costs so the CEO’s can continue to be paid 8 figures plus stocks.</p>
<p>I hate that 80/20 rule. That’s absurdity. The reason they pay their execs so well is their pay will be included in expenses, health care cost whether it really helps people or not. I am sure there are zillions of accounting dance they can do to meet 80% spending on health care.</p>
<p>President to speak at 1130 on this ‘fix’. Believe they’re trying to do it administratively versus legislatively. Should be interesting as they are technically hindered with going via executive action.</p>
<p>Hating the 80/20 rule is pretty much the same as hating insurance companies being involved at all. If they’re involved, that’s pretty much what the overhead is going to be. Comparing private insurance to Medicare overhead is misleading because the Medicare overhead doesn’t include everything. For example, Medicare sets prices and rates but that cost (1) is cheaper because it’s national instead of state by state and (2) isn’t included in the quoted overhead anyway.</p>
<p>Given the crisis over the individual policy cancellations and the political fallout, there is no way that the politicians will allow mass cancellations of plans on the employer market right before the midterm elections.</p>
<p>tatinG, you keep saying that, but they’ve already angered the sacred medicare voting bloc.</p>
<p>The house doesn’t really want to fix it at all.</p>
<p>And I can’t see one constitutional thing that the President can do with executive orders.</p>
<p>The best “they” can hope for is that the insurance companies will play ball based on their fear of single payor. But who even knows?</p>
<p>I think you are wildly optimistic, but you could be right. As a high income individual in the individual market, I definitely feel like a canary in the proverbial coal mine. Still breathing, but I have noticed a lot of middle class canaries on the ground.</p>
<p>I’d also like to go on the record as stating, I am sick of hearing what the president has to “say,” and I would simply like to see what it is he actually DOES. Like the old Elvis song. “A little less conversation, a little more action.” ;)</p>
Something I’ve always wondered. I hear about the low overhead of Medicare but does that include employee costs (e.g. health insurance, pensions, etc)? A private enterprise could never compete if those costs aren’t included. Or are we literally just talking about administrative costs for processing claims?</p>
<p>It’s all numbers. If the vast majority are satisfied nothing else matters. That could happen. Look at all the new Medicare sign-ups and subsidized plans.</p>
<p>Well they just decided to move the employer mandate out arbitrarily so by that logic they could do a number of things. </p>
<p>The more I think about the money side of this the less I like any of the You-Can-Keep-Your-Plan fixes. I think the ACA already had major financial hole in it, and shot gunning a poorly thought out fix into something poorly planned is just going to make things worse. </p>
<p>They should push the whole thing by a year and fix the web site properly and work out how the finances are supposed to hold together. Knowing what we now know its almost inconceivable they didnt reach for that branch during the Government Silmdown in September. There was some kind of magic thinking going on.</p>
<p>right, Flossy, but medicare doesn’t really have a profit component and it doesn’t severely punish a group of people. Not even the wealthiest people, by the way, just the people.</p>
<p>This also goes to the much ballyhood idea of how this will free people up from the tyranny of insurance through employer, an idea whose time has come imho. If the insurance it frees them up for is wildly overpriced for the few healthy middle class individuals? It’s the same situation.</p>
<p>Frankly, what I feel right now is that we have traded the price to pre existings over to healthy young earners. I’m not sure except to say it really REALLY bugs me that subsidies are based on earnings and not on assets. It’s so skewed to favor the older generation, it’s actually dangerous, imho.</p>
<p>ETA: argbargy, I’m inclined to agree with you, except, of course, there is no way the insurance companies will change the policies, now. People like me will still be paying 3X more for less coverage. Of that I’m sure.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine what the ‘fix’ would be. I’ve pondered each possible solution and each time, it just won’t work both from a logistical and financial aspect. At this point, they literally have nothing left but hope if they want to continue to enforce ACA.</p>
<p>“The more I think about the money side of this the less I like any of the You-Can-Keep-Your-Plan fixes. I think the ACA already had major financial hole in it, and shot gunning a poorly thought out fix into something poorly planned is just going to make things worse.”</p>
<p>I think this is a legitimate concern. It is my concern. :)</p>