<p>“It wasn’t that expensive to do away with the caps.” </p>
<p>That’s why insurance companies should have offered this option pre-2010.</p>
<p>“That’s why insurance companies should have offered this option pre-2010.”</p>
<p>LMAO, like insurance companies would do anything that would raise their costs - even a little - without being regulated to do so. They don’t do “out of the kindness of their hearts” kind of things.</p>
<p>Again, big boat, inertia. Ever watch some of these negotiations? No side gives til either forced or they are assured the other guy is conceding enough. Or both.</p>
<p>I still wonder how much of a problem it really was not having unlimited lifetime coverage. If it wasn’t that expensive to do away with caps, then it couldn’t have been too big problem back then.</p>
<p>If you research the impact of Romneycare on bankruptcies due to medical bills, you will see that there has been no improvement and some say it may have increased. In any event, there is no clear evidence yet (unless I missed it) that it has helped in that regard.</p>
<p>I’m hoping you may be able to find that, GP.
Some actuary somewhere figured it was to the insurers’ benefit, even if it was unlikely to be some huge % of the customers. Business, plain and simple.</p>
<p>Well…if the cost is $75 a policy…and there are 100 million policies affected…
We are talking $7.5 billion.</p>
<p>If 25,000 exceed the cap by $1 million. That is $25 billion.</p>
<p>“California has a law on the books that can make adults responsible for the debts of their elderly parents.”</p>
<p>My mother is going to have to stop lavishing her great grandchildren with expensive gifts.</p>
<p>Mass actuarial value (Connector) apparently didn’t match Bronze. I am seeing 40-50%.</p>
<p>GP, It was a huge problem for the people who exceeded their cap. Does it matter if it was only several million or tens of millions? </p>
<p>Some caps were extremely low and when you hear people talking about the cheap insurance they had - these were the types of things that were in these cheap plans. </p>
<p>“Prior to the passage of the ACA, most lifetime limits were set at $1 million. While some plans had limits as high as $5 million, it wasn’t uncommon to find policies that capped their payment amount at well below $1 million. If you met your lifetime limit, you would no longer receive any payment for any services. It would be the same as not having insurance at all.”</p>
<p>[Lifetime</a> Coverage Limits: A Thing of the Past | Navix Insurance Marketplace](<a href=“http://navixmarketplace.com/learn/lifetime-coverage-limits-a-thing-of-the-past/]Lifetime”>http://navixmarketplace.com/learn/lifetime-coverage-limits-a-thing-of-the-past/)</p>
<p>Emilybee, your claim of several million exceeding their lifetime limits is belied by the article you linked to in your post.</p>
<p>“Only about 25,000 people hit their lifetime maximums in 2009, leaving a lot of people who were paying premiums and not using all of their benefits.”</p>
<p>Some will like this perspective- I like how it considers multiple factors, not just one team’s set of seemingly representative numbers. [Did</a> RomneyCare Really Have No Effect on Medical Bankruptcy in Massachusetts? - Megan McArdle - The Atlantic](<a href=“Did RomneyCare Really Have No Effect on Medical Bankruptcy in Massachusetts? - The Atlantic”>Did RomneyCare Really Have No Effect on Medical Bankruptcy in Massachusetts? - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>25000 and the cost was 1 billion to the govt…or 40,000 each…</p>
<p>I thought the cost would exceed 40,000. To the govt…</p>
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<p>GP, we have the numbers from the PriceWaterhouse analysis: in 2009 they said 20,000 to 25,000 people each year went over their lifetimes caps nationally. That’s a “small problem” in the sense that a very small fraction of the total population faced that problem, in the same way that winning the MegaMillions Lotto jackpot is a small thing insofar as very few people nationally win the thing. But either is a life-changing event for the lucky or unlucky few. It doesn’t cost much–a couple of dollars per month per policy, PriceWaterhouse estimates–to fix a problem that has truly devastating consequences for those who exceeded, or one day would exceed, their lifetime caps. To run a health insurance system on such a reverse lottery basis–destroying the lives of 20,000 to 25,000 people annually so that the rest of us can save $2 per month on our insurance policies–is cruel beyond belief.</p>
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<p>The 20,000 to 25,000 people exceeding the lifetime caps on their health insurance don’t all file for bankruptcy. And they don’t all have huge medical debts; as you pointed out yourself, most simply won’t be able to incur major medical expenses once their insurance runs out. In the 12 months ending March 31, 2013, there were 1,132,772 non-business bankruptcies filed in the United States, according to the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts, so even if all the people who exceeded their lifetime caps ended up in bankruptcy, they’d represent barely a blip on the national bankruptcy picture. That doesn’t make the impact any less devastating for those on whom it falls.</p>
<p>Research I’ve seen says most of the medical-related bankruptcies involve people who have insurance but can’t meet their high deductibles when they are socked with big medical bills. It’s also often disguised as credit card debt and/or mortgage debt, as people try to stretch other financial resources to cover medical bills.</p>
<p>“Emilybee, your claim of several million exceeding their lifetime limits is belied by the article you linked to in your post.”</p>
<p>GP, I didn’t claim anything. I was just using that figure as an example - as in does it matter if it was Y and not Yx10.</p>
<p>You ask why the insurance companies didn’t get rid of the cap on their own; why do you think they didn’t?</p>
<p>Seriously, if the problem was this inexpensive, then it probably made sense to lift the caps.</p>
<p>
Keep in mind that’s cumulative: for most of those people, there is no way to get insurance in the future. Their expensive medical care was also a pre-existing condition that precluded buying a new policy once the benefits from the earlier ones were exhausted. Some of those limit-hitters were infants or children. (Of course some of those limit-hitters died, so not all went into the long-term pool of financially distressed uninsurables).</p>
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You’re nuts – it was not even the type of policy that comes under ACA-- it wasn’t health insurance, it didn’t even come into effect until the catastrophic amount was hit.</p>
<p>Again, it was like an umbrella policy: it was designed to kick in at the point where the policy limits of the regular health insurance were exhausted.</p>
<p>
They’re used mostly in a different context --they are intended to deal with neglect situations, where an elderly person is destitute while the adult offspring are financially well off enough to easily provide a home and basic care – so it is more likely that the adult offspring would be dunned for the costs of a board and care home rather than medical bills. But I was just pointing out that you can’t assume that the debts can’t be passed on to the next generation.</p>