Affordable Care Act Scene 2 - Insurance Premiums

Parent Cafe
11221

<p>Sorry, bluebayou. </p>

11222

<p>I like the moments of humor here.</p>

<p>The March 31 deadline is to avoid penalties. My site says enroll and pay by 3/23 to have insurance take effect 4/1.</p>

<p>CoveredCa says: For coverage to start on April 1, you must choose a plan by March 15 and pay your first bill by March 26. </p>

11223

<p>The following has gone out to California insurance brokers…</p>

<p>The following little not went out to California insurance brokers. No problems here…</p>

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11224

<p>Here we go again - another change to the law. Non-grandfathered plans get another 2 year extension in addition to the one year granted last Nov. I will let the readers decide if this has anything to do with politics. Jonathan Turley’s comments were particularly interesting.</p>

<p><a href=“Consumers Allowed to Keep Health Plans for Two More Years - The New York Times”>Consumers Allowed to Keep Health Plans for Two More Years - The New York Times;

<p>This will probably increase premiums for everyone who didn’t get this reprieve.</p>

11225

<p>dstark, my bad. I didn’t realize March 31 is the no-penalty date. What I saw just said it’s the end of open enrollment.</p>

11226

<p>LasMa, no problem. </p>

11227

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<p>Thanks for this texaspg. </p>

11228

<p>March 31 is both the end of open enrollment and the end of the first three months of 2014. If you lack insurance for longer than three months in a year, you are liable for a tax penalty. If you don’t have insurance from Jan. 1 to April 1, that’s already three months and one day and you’ll already have incurred the penalty.* Moreover, if you don’t buy insurance by March 31, you have to wait until the next enrollment period.**</p>

<ul>
<li>assuming insurance isn’t too expensive for you, you’re in the US legally, yadda yadda</li>
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<p>** unless you have a qualifying event, yadda yadda</p>

11229

<p>I guess the govt is conceding that enrollments are not going too well. In its budget it has allocated $5.5 billion to cover insurance company losses. I am sure this is not the final number for the aggregate losses of the insurance companies.</p>

<p><a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?;

11230

<p>That 5.5 billion would only get spent if the companies hadn’t priced right to begin with. Not much chance of that, since it was all simple math. :-* </p>

<p>Can’t shake the feeling that this year’s premiums are just a shot in the dark. Besides the risk corridor contingency money, the partial implementation of the ACA leaves the true cost structure up in the air, doesn’t it?</p>

<p>In the spirit of full disclosure, it did finally occur to me there’s a silver lining to the act, and old folks aren’t making out like the complete and utter bandits boomers have proven to be: having to pony up for a share of pre-menopausal women’s birth control is just a little bit of a giveback.</p>

11231

<p>Maybe there is some hope in Ca. A lawsuit has been filed against Covered California on behalf of the almost 1 million people who had their non-grandfathered plans cancelled last year.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2014/03/05/sen-gaines-suing-covered-california.html”>http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2014/03/05/sen-gaines-suing-covered-california.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

11232

<p>^^^Whaa hoo…best news in a long time.</p>

11233

<p>Glad to see that dietz199 agrees with Obama.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45159”>http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45159&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

11234

<p>I read the article GP posted, about the risk corridors. According to the article, the one GP himself posted, GP is mistaken in saying “In its budget [the administration] has allocated $5.5 billion to cover insurance company losses.” The article says:</p>

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<p>GP, you’re entitled to believe that the administration is incorrect in its expectations, but you should not pretend this article supports that belief.</p>

11235

<p>More people getting screwed by Obamacare in Ca., but I’m sure they’re liars.</p>

<p>“Confused, frustrated and pressed by deadline, more than 100 people came to a Wednesday forum on the Covered California exchange looking for answers, and in many cases, health insurance. Tim Freeman, a 58-year-old real estate broker, came because his Anthem Blue Cross health insurance policy was canceled. It didn’t meet the standards set out in the Affordable Care Act, the federal reform that spawned the Covered California insurance marketplace. Now he and his wife are uninsured. If they remain that way past the March 31 enrollment deadline, they’ll face fines of as much as 1 percent of their annual household income. But they don’t qualify for the income-based subsidies that whittle away at premium prices for Covered California plans. “It’s more than double what I was paying,” said Freeman after the Camarillo forum”</p>

<p>“Sharon Migdol of Thousand Oaks said she called her doctor and Los Robles Medical Center & Hospital in Thousand Oaks. She said she was told they were included in the Covered California plan she bought from Blue Shield. The Friday before her Tuesday knee surgery, she received a call saying her doctor wasn’t covered. Neither was the hospital. “I needed the surgery. I needed it six months ago,” said Migdol, who went ahead with the procedure. She negotiated a discount and a payment plan with the doctor and is hoping to do the same with the hospital.”</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.vcstar.com/news/2014/mar/05/ventura-county-residents-scrambling-to-meet/”>http://www.vcstar.com/news/2014/mar/05/ventura-county-residents-scrambling-to-meet/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

11236

<p>So this woman had to drive 45 minutes to another town to see an Osteopath for her ailing shoulder because she couldn’t find any provider in her Obamacare Blue Shield network in the town in which she lives.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.missionandstate.org/blog/desperately-seeking-aca-blue-shield-provider-obamacare-healthcare-affordablecareact/”>http://www.missionandstate.org/blog/desperately-seeking-aca-blue-shield-provider-obamacare-healthcare-affordablecareact/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

11237

<p>CF, the spokeswoman is referring to payments after 2014. They are conceding they will lose at least $5.5 billion in 2014. Just like all the other pronouncements from the Administration, she is deliberately being deceptive.</p>

<p>Why would they have a line item for a $5.5 billion expenditure in 2014 if they expected offsetting revenues? </p>

11238

<p>Read the entire article. </p>

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<p>I’d like to know where you get the idea that the administration spokeswoman is talking about payments after 2014. Certainly not from the article.</p>

11239

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<p>Oh, so from the effective date of the ACA forward, everyone who’s screwed by an insurance company error or a doctor’s office error or a hospital error concerning the scope of insurance coverage is “screwed by Obamacare,” eh, GP? People have been getting screwed by insurance company errors, doctor’s office errors, and hospital errors regarding insurance coverage as long as there have been doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies. I can’t begin to tell you how many hours my mother and other members of my family acting on on her behalf have spent over the last several decades trying to cut through the red tape and b.s.with just the kind of problems Sharon Migdol of Thousand Oaks describes. The vast majority of time we spent on those kinds of problems were pre-ACA. The ACA didn’t make those sorts of problems go away, but it’s nothing short of bizarre–a kind of perverse wishful thinking on your part-- to assume this is a brand new sort of problem that didn’t exist pre-ACA. </p>

11240

<p>CF, please re-read my post. I promise you I am right.</p>

<p>If you research it, you will see I am right. There would be no reason to budget for $5.5 billion of losses if there were offsetting revenues from the insurance companies in 2014</p>