<p>CF, time will tell. I am still confident that I am going to win the bet.</p>
<p>i had all day Sunday planned to do this Govt plan, than life got in the way, and I didn’t leave the hospital until after 5 pm. So, I signed on early this morning. I knew I wanted a BC plan, PPO, probably gold.(Only plan my main MD uses, besides Medicare.) I could not believe how many options. When tried to get back on site, too busy. I figured I’d pay the deductible for my regular plan for January, if I got ill, but take my time figuring out the nuances. I miss having a personal insurance salesman helping through the process.</p>
<p>Emilybee, thanks. </p>
<p>NY premiums are very low for people my age. Very low.
My kid will qualify for a subsidy. The cost will eventually be less than 350 a month. His premiums will be priced at decent rates.</p>
<p>Reddoor, After seeing your premiums, I dont know how others can complain about theirs. 
What is your story? Tons of kids? Platinum plan?</p>
<p>“CF, time will tell. I am still confident that I am going to win the bet.”</p>
<p>You already lost. You remind of the character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The character that wanted to keep fighting as his limbs were being cut off one limb at a time. :)</p>
<p>Seriously… You lost. You lost as soon as you made the bet. :)</p>
<p>There is going to be over 420,000 sign ups at the end of Decemeber. Almost all of these signups are going to pay. March is going to be a huge month. </p>
<p>There are approximately 570,000 people already insured in Cal that are now eligible for subsidies. These are people that have already proven they pay their insurance.</p>
<p>If 300,000 of the 570,000 sign up on an exchange… I only need 200,000 more if 50 percent pay. You pulled the 50 percent number out of your butt. :)</p>
<p>But we can pretend that is some kind of accurate number.</p>
<p>I can do the rest of the math but there is no point. :)</p>
<p>I would bet a lot of money on the 500,000 number. ;)</p>
<p>bookworm, Sorry to hear about your medical woes.</p>
<p>As to buying insurance, if you are not eligible for subsidies, you should just buy directly from BC. You can also use a personal broker.</p>
<p>It’s just a flesh wound.</p>
<p>CF, :)</p>
<p>I think the head is chopped off. :)</p>
<p>“CF, time will tell. I am still confident that I am going to win the bet.”</p>
<p>Based on the parameters being just the count, it was a sucker bet. Too many people needed to renew…</p>
<p>This seems like interesting information. The premiums seem nicely discuounted at about 5+ insurers and really low at 10+</p>
<p>[Obamacare</a> Prices: Competition Lacking in Some Exchanges - Businessweek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>I see that CF has seen the movie. </p>
<p>What a sucker’s bet…</p>
<p>[‘Record</a> day’ as last-minute Obamacare shoppers get a 24-hour buffer - NBC News.com](<a href=“http://m.nbcnews.com/health/deadline-looms-obamacare-2D11792133]'Record”>'Record day' as last-minute Obamacare shoppers get a 24-hour buffer)</p>
<p>“As of 2:00 p.m. today, we’ve seen approximately 850,000 visits to HealthCare.gov – approximately five times higher than the same amount by that time last Monday. This is on top of the more than 1.2 million site visits this weekend,” said Julie Bataille, a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the site"</p>
<p>My 420,000 number is very, very conservative. ;)</p>
<p>dstark, of course. How could I not have? Look at my user name!</p>
<p>Just reporting that I was able to sign up through Covered California (because I don’t know what my income will be next year) . But our total family premium is about 50% higher than before for very inferior coverage. I see that they’ve slipped in something I really don’t like. The generic prescription copay $19 doesn’t kick in until you have used up your whole deductible. In our case $5,000!!! I wonder how many people realize they are going to be paying full cost for prescriptions from now on??</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang, lol. </p>
<p>I hope you can forgive me. :)</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python[/url])”>http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python)</a></p>
<p>“Californias enrollments include 77,000 customers who signed up from Dec. 20 to Dec. 22, he said. The state planned to close enrollment for plans starting Jan. 1 at midnight local time, Lee said, although anyone who starts an application by then will have coverage at the first of the year.”</p>
<p>[Obamacare</a> Sign-Up Extended as Customers Rush to Enroll - Businessweek](<a href=“http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2013-12-23/obamacare-deadline-extended-one-day-as-customers-rush-to-website]Obamacare”>http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2013-12-23/obamacare-deadline-extended-one-day-as-customers-rush-to-website)</p>
<p>I am raising my very conservative number to 440,000. </p>
<p>I think the number is going to be 470,000 + after Dec 23.</p>
<p>“There are approximately 570,000 people already insured in Cal that are now eligible for subsidies. These are people that have already proven they pay their insurance.”</p>
<p>dstark, I am not following your numbers. Where did you get this number? Are you saying that they are going to cancel their plans and apply for an exchange plan?</p>
<p>Regardless of what numbers you keep pulling out of your hat, we really don’t know anything about the people who have signed up for exchange plans. How many have been paying for insurance in the past, what level of subsidies will they receive and what is the average premium they will have to pay? How sick is this population and are they older than the overall population? </p>
<p>You are making a ton of assumptions, none of them warranted at this point. Did you predict the chaos we have experienced with this law 6 months ago? So far all the supporters have swept all the problems under the rug, pretending that the 65% of the population that disapproves of the law are delusional.</p>
<p>I will go one step further than my bet with you and predict the law will have to undergo radical changes by the end of 2014, otherwise the whole thing collapses. Either the govt will have to bailout the insurance companies because of a massive death spiral or the level of discontent among the population when they discover that they can’t see their doctors or get their drugs or can’t afford the deductibles will be so great, it will force the govt to abandon the law.</p>
<p>Changes to law are not bettable since it is not an allowed discussion.</p>
<p>GP, I said it is going to take 3 years for Obamacare to run smoothly.</p>
<p>I got that from industry sources.</p>
<p>I did not pull the 570,000 number out of my tush.</p>
<p>I am sorry you dont understand my numbers. </p>
<p>I linked the 570,000 number. I have seen other sources that lead me to believe the 570,000 number is close.</p>
<p>I believe I have linked those also. </p>
<p>I try not to get my info from poiitical sources. I try not to get my info from people who comment on articles and and are arithmetically challenged.</p>
<p>I do not need 570,000 people who already have insurance to sign up on an exchange to win the bet. The 570,000 number is not that high if there are 1.8 million people with insurance in Calif.</p>
<p>Many of the 570,000 are going to buy insurance on an exchange.</p>
<p>“Regardless of what numbers you keep pulling out of your hat, we really don’t know anything about the people who have signed up for exchange plans. How many have been paying for insurance in the past, what level of subsidies will they receive and what is the average premium they will have to pay? How sick is this population and are they older than the overall population?”</p>
<p>I make assumptions based on real numbers.
Here is one assumption that is proving true.</p>
<p>People tend to procrastinate. On Dec 17, and 18 about 39,000 enrolled using covered ca.
317,000 signed up thru Dec 18. These are public numbers.
There are 5 days left after Dec 18 to sign up for insurance and the 2 days before Dec 18 covered ca averaged about 20,000 signups a day.</p>
<p>There is no way with all the procrastination that covered ca was going to average fewer thsn 20,000 sign ups a day during the last 5 days. Hence, my conservative prediction of 100,000 more signups or 420,000 by Dec 23. I believed there would be more signups than 420,000 but why push it?</p>
<p>As the numbers come in hotter than 20,000 a day… I have raised my conservative numbers. Facts affect my thinking.</p>
<p>Looking at the number of sign ups this weekend, I can see 470,000 sign ups give or take…</p>
<p>Your arguments about how sick the population is and those other arguments are irrelevant. </p>
<p>You lost…it isnt official yet but it almost is official.</p>
<p>“Your arguments about how sick the population is and those other arguments are irrelevant.”</p>
<p>When trying to figure out who is going to actually pay for what they signed up for, it is helpful to know something about them. For example, if very few of these people have paid for insurance in the past, it becomes less likely they are going to start making payments now. Covered Ca. has spent over a quarter of a billion dollars to sign people up, so I am not surprised they have signed up a lot of people. If most of these people were already insured before Jan 1, then you may be right; if they weren’t, you may be wrong. How come Covered Ca is not releasing any demographic or any other information about these signups?</p>
<p>BTW, how sick is this population and who they are are critically important in determining how much these plans will cost in future years. Our bet while interesting is hardly going to be determinative in whether this law succeeds or not.</p>
<p>The sign up numbers are so large, it is not going to matter how sick or whatever the population is…</p>
<p>Does Vegas have a betting line on how many people are going to pay in Calif?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is complete and utter crap and you know it, GP. Talk about pulling stuff out of your “hat” :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
That’s why I have an agent. </p>
<p>I didn’t use the agent to select a plan, but I designated an agent within the computer interface – Covered California lets me do that. I just designated the same agent who I already had with B.S. – it’s a husband/wife team and they were very helpful early on in answering some questions I had, so I figured I’d toss the commission their way. (Doesn’t cost me anything, so why not?)</p>
<p>So last night I get a phone call – it’s my agent. He’s logged into my account and noticed a glitch – it was something I had seen but didn’t know how to fix. (I know there was something buggy about the messages I was getting from Covered California, but as I had already paid my binder to BS, I figured it was just some sort of technical glitch I could ignore). So Mr. Agent asks if I am ok with him fixing the problem he sees - -I say sure, thank you – and with me on the phone he walks me through the steps. It takes about 3 minutes and then all is well – now when I log in everything is as it should be, and I also know what caused the problem and how to fix it in the future.</p>
<p>Now I am pretty tech-savvy as well as knowledgeable about insurance – but here is a situation where an agent did help me resolve a problem.</p>
<p>I just want to clarify: this is for an exchange-purchased policy. Licensed insurance agents and brokers can help people purchase both on and off exchange, and they get paid commissions either way. A lot of them have gone through extensive training so they can do that – I even know some people who specifically became agents this year with ACA in mind.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That was what my plan was BEFORE ACA – at least for the past year. (I had a long discussion with someone at Blue Shield in July because the local Rite Aid wouldn’t take my insurance card). The only difference is that I had a $3500 deductible and now I have a $4500 deductible.</p>
<p>But if you are buying generics you might be surprised to learn that they don’t cost that much anyway. That is, the $19 co-pay may be about what you would be charged anyway, depending on the drug. I had been prescribed two common antibiotics, and the cost was about $30. </p>
<p>Before ACA when my son was insurance shopping he was dismayed that he couldn’t find a plan that offered prescription drug coverage, but after doing some research I told him not to worry about that – I realized that many drug stores offer their own plans that are cheap to buy into and provide even small co-pays on generics than the insurance companies are asking. </p>
<p>Obviously, brand name drugs would be a different story – but the programs the pharmacies offer do provide discounts on those as well.</p>