<p>Tears of laughter are running down my face from poor Chuck Dupree and his two boys, Thomas and Thomas.</p>
<p>Okay, what percentage of all the policies sold on the individual market were junk? First, please define junk and then then tell me how many existed out of all the policies sold on the individual market? The supporters are mimicking the talking points of the politicians who had the unenviable job of justifying the cancellation of 6 to 8 million polices in the US. I doubt they would be extending these policies if consumers thought they were junk.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what percentage of policies sold were junk, for the computation we’re trying to do. What matters is the number of plans (not policies, but plans) that were junk. Junk plans were exceedingly profitable-- of course they were, because any plan that doesn’t actually pay out is a profitable plan. That means there were plenty of junk plans available.</p>
<p>I’ll give you a conservative definition of junk plan. Any plan was junk if it had one of these misfeatures:</p>
<p>limit on hospital days covered
limit on physician services covered
annual benefit cap less than $1 million (might want to argue for a different number here)
lifetime cap less than $2 million (here, too)
didn’t cover pregnancy, for women under 50
excluded a disease or condition the person was suffering from</p>
<p>According to my definition, plenty of plans that were available previously, but which are not presently legal, were not junk. But credulous people were lured into buying junk.</p>
<p>So, the answer is you don’t know. BTW, I had a plan which didn’t cover pregnancy, which didn’t concern me at all. </p>
<p>Don’t get the distinction between plans and policies and why this is important?</p>
<p>GP, the overtly political article that you linked failed to tell us which of the available plans were junk. That’s a defect of the study which I am pointing out and which you are apparently unable to correct. Don’t blame me if you post stuff from the Heritage Foundation and we point out flaws in it. </p>
<p>And I thought you were a guy. I said that a woman under 50 had a junk plan if it didn’t cover pregnancy. But if you weren’t a woman under 50 that wouldn’t apply to you. </p>
<p>About the distinction between plans and policies: the article that you linked said that young people, pre-ACA, had a lot of plans that were cheaper than any plan currently available to them. I would like to know how many of those pre-ACA plans were junk. </p>
<p>It’s irrelevant to the argument the Heritage Foundation is making how many people actually bought those cheap pre-ACA plans (how many policies were actually sold). Maybe nobody did. Maybe there were 5 plans available to every 27-year-old woman that were so self-evidently bad that not one person bought them. We don’t know. The Heritage Foundation doesn’t tell us, and they don’t need to tell us, because their argument is about the number of choices available to young people, not which choices young people actually made.</p>
<p>Their point is when you standardize policies (or plans) into a carbon copy of each other you get less choice and higher premiums. A plan you consider junk may be entirely acceptable to someone else. Also, they make the point that every state which outlawed guaranteed issue and community ratings had a significant falloff of plans and huge premium increases. In New York, Kentucky and other states where this was done, it basically killed the individual market.</p>
<p>I found this from the National Association of Commissioners.</p>
<p>“Of the nearly 16 million enrollees in the individual market in 2012, 725,710 individuals were enrolled in plans classified as limited-benefit plans” So 4.5% of the plans capped benefits. I couldn’t find what these caps were so it I wouldn’t necessarily assume these were junk plans.</p>
<p>But how many plans were offered? The Heritage Foundation says that young women are worse off now, because they previously had a number (average of nine, or something like that) of plans they could have bought that cost less than what is currently on offer. But if all of those cheap plans were also junk plans, then it doesn’t matter if anyone actually bought the junk plans.</p>
<p>I want to know what the situation is, if we only look at pre-ACA plans that were not junk. </p>
<p>GP, You posted that political link. </p>
<p>I skimmed the link and then read the link out of respect for you and because I wanted to kill a few minutes while I worked out on an elliptical.</p>
<p>Now you are telling me us you dont know how many plans were junk? That it doesnt matter if people liked their junk plans ? </p>
<p>How many plans were junk and then we can make our own decisions?</p>
<p>There was a recent piece in the Chicago Trubune. The writer said, ACA is never going to be repealed. Avik Roy said ACA wont be repealed. The MIT guy said it is never going to be repealed. The public doesnt want ACA repealed. It would be political suicide to repeal. </p>
<p>Let 's face it. We arent going to tax employees like another proposal. That is political suicide. More states are now talking about expanding medicaid. We arent going back because it would be politically suicidal. </p>
<p>You are in favor of lower premiums. If cancelled plans are extended again that raises premiums for everybody else.</p>
<p>So… Let’s be honest. Your links are political in nature. You are more interested in winning elections than in Obamacare arent you? </p>
<p>You never posted this. I waited and waited. All of Avik Roy’s links are political and many of the facts are dubious. That never stopped you before from posting links with dubious facts.</p>
<p>Obamacare is not going to collapse.
You need a plan b. </p>
<p><a href=“Sorry, Conservatives: Based On The Latest Sign-Up Figures, There Won't Be An Obamacare Death Spiral”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/02/12/sorry-conservatives-based-on-the-latest-sign-up-figures-there-wont-be-an-obamacare-death-spiral/</a></p>
<p>"Bottom line: Obamacare is underperforming; it’s not collapsing</p>
<p>One of the unseemly aspects of the last four-plus months is watching some on the right root for Obamacare to fail. Whatever your political affiliations, it’s not a good thing if Obamacare wrecks the health care system. Real people—real lives—will be harmed, and are being harmed, as Obamacare makes health insurance even less affordable for many in the middle class.</p>
<p>In some quarters, there has been a kind of intellectual laziness, a belief that there’s no need for critics to come up with better reforms, because Obamacare will “collapse under its own weight,” relieving them of that responsibility.</p>
<p>Obamacare isn’t good for the country. But it’s not going to collapse. And that makes the development of a credible, market-oriented health-reform agenda more urgent than ever. "</p>
<p>Facts just dont make a difference do they? Who cares about facts? Facts just get in the way. Do you care about facts, GP?</p>
<p>Do you know what I find amazing about these junk plans? Besides the facts that there were so many of these plans ( over 1200) and so many people were “covered” under these plans (4 million)? </p>
<p>Major companies sold this sh…</p>
<p><a href=“Cheap Health Insurance Still Inadequate - Consumer Reports”>Cheap Health Insurance Still Inadequate - Consumer Reports;
<p>Obsessing about the political nature of disapproval/disagreement tends to grow old. The law, along with the premium shifting it’s brought about, was passed during (gasp) a political bs highwater mark. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably the most amusing quote I’ve read on this thread… :))</p>
<p>I am okay with fixing Obamacare but it is not going to be a cosmetic makeover. The law needs radical surgery.</p>
<p>Yeah, 4 million out of 250 million insured people have these mini-medical policies. 1.6 % of the insured.</p>
<p>Dstark =D> </p>
<p>This is the first time I’ve been grateful for the new crazed smilies. </p>
<p>LasMa , :).</p>
<p>lookingforward, thanks for your reply, way back there…</p>
<p>OT, but how do you see the smilies? I changed the zoom to 1000% and still could only see a yellow dot in dstark’s last post.</p>
<p>Yeah, I can’t see them either on my PC, although I can on my phone. </p>
<p>I was applauding dstark’s last two posts. I’d give you the post numbers if I we had post numbers any more.</p>
<p>So I’m deliberately not responding to dstark’s overtly political post. The truth is I have never revealed on this thread my politics and I don’t intend to. Whether you’re from the left, right or wherever, the law doesn’t work well for millions of Americans. That’s the truth. Politicians from any political group are more than capable of screwing up and in this case they outdid themselves.</p>
<p>Omg. here we go again. Remember TOS. </p>
<p>uh-oh, 72% of affluent baby boomers think Obamacare will pay for their long-term care health needs.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bankingmyway.com/home/sorry-boomers-aca-won’t-cover-long-term-care”>http://www.bankingmyway.com/home/sorry-boomers-aca-won’t-cover-long-term-care</a></p>