<p>No, he’s saying there was discrimination based on health in the insurance market, and that was acceptable. He is off by over an order of magnitude, however, about the amount of the discrimination. He estimated that about 1% of people would be denied insurance pre-ACA. Nope.</p>
<p>If you wonder what cherrypicking looks like, wonder no more. It looks like rejecting 45% of applicants. A company that denies 45% of potential subscribers can give low, low rates to the other 55%. And those 55% can have wonderful networks, too, because they only have a tiny chance of needing to use the networks.</p>
<p>CF, I was just wondering because an Ayn Rand organization said there was discrimination. Also , the link GP posted about the amount of plans talked about community ratings. Why would there be talk of community ratings in GPs own links if there was no discrimination?</p>
<p>TatinG, why would the individual mandate be postponed?</p>
<p>Unpopular mandates mean lost ‘E’ word. Can’t be spelled out because of forum rules. Same reason the employer mandate was postponed (twice?). Same reason the ending of the grandfathered individual policies was postponed. </p>
<p>I wonder why the statistics on how many previously uninsured are getting insurance on the exchanges aren’t being kept by the government and instead we have to rely on surveys and polls. Isn’t this why the entire ACA was put together? To get the uninsured insured? And yet they aren’t keeping track to see if the law is indeed doing what it was supposed to do?</p>
<p>“What happens is they have to buy individual insurance, just as if their employer was never going to be required to offer them insurance. I don’t see why this is a particular problem.”</p>
<p>Because the law was designed expecting the employers to cover many of them but then decided to put the complete burden on the individuals.</p>
<p>The cost of insurance always varied greatly from community to community. I know this because we did a lot of moving around due to general chaos some years ago.</p>
<p>It’s true that the employer mandate for businesses of 50-100 people is delayed, but what difference does it make? How are the employees different from employers of 0-49 people? It means more people have to buy individual insurance, but as a policy matter, what difference does it make whether the insurance policy for such a person is bought by the employer or the employee? </p>
<p>I assume that political implications of the change are off topic here. But I also think the number of people affected is not going to be that great. How many people are employed in businesses of 50-100 people and don’t have employer-supplied insurance, either supplied by their employer or by their spouse’s or parents’ employer? Those are the affected people.</p>
<p>Flossy, community rating is the technical term for the ACA requirement that everyone of the same age in a community must be charged the same premium, without regard to gender or health status.</p>
<p>Okay. I obviously misunderstood the question.</p>
<p>I would guess that if a healthy uninsured person figures that their employer will have to provide it next year and considering all the rule changes and general uncertainty many will be okay with waiting. But, that’s a guess.</p>
<p>“But I also think the number of people affected is not going to be that great. How many people are employed in businesses of 50-100 people and don’t have employer-supplied insurance, either supplied by their employer or by their spouse’s or parents’ employer? Those are the affected people.”</p>
<p>If it was not, there was no need to create such a mandate and then postpone it. I am certain the numbers are in Millions.</p>
<p>Fang, those decline rates don’t even include people like my DH. Before ACA, he was able to get coverage – at a vastly larger premium than the base rate, and with huge deductibles and significant restrictions on benefits. So he would not show up in any newly-insured statistics, and I don’t know if there’s any way to measure the newly-adequately-insured. But for the first time, he has good coverage at a reasonable price. </p>
<p>Let’s do a bit of math here, looking at 2013 numbers. We have 7.8 million people employed by firms of 50-100 people. Of those, about 55% are covered by employer-supplied insurance. But employer-supplied insurance in that business size has a “take-up” of about 80%, meaning that 20% of people who could have employer insurance elect not to take it. So roughly 69% of the employees are already offered employer insurance. </p>
<p>That leaves us about 1.7 million people who work for businesses with 50-100 people, and who are not eligible for employer insurance. But notice, this includes both full-time people and part-timers. The part-timers are not affected by the delay of the mandate, because it wouldn’t have applied to them anyway.</p>
<p>A good estimate of the number of people affected by this change is one million to a million and a half people. These are people who were not already offered employer health insurance, would have had to have been offered employer health insurance in 2015, but now will not have to be offered such insurance until 2016. Of this group, some percentage are covered by their spouse’s or parents’ insurance. Probably less than a million people will be required to buy individual insurance who otherwise would have gotten employer-supplied insurance.</p>
<p>The decline rates, as I understand it, are the raw numbers of people that applied for insurance and were denied. They don’t directly include people who decided not to apply for a particular policy because they were convinced they wouldn’t be approved. But nationwide (averaged over companies, not applications) companies rejected about 1 in 5 applicants for health insurance. Not 1%, but 19%. </p>
<p>If a company rejects a fifth of applicants, OF COURSE they can offer cheap rates and broad networks. </p>
<p>Kinda like the college selection process…which is ‘holistic’ and supported in volume on CC.</p>
<p>
Now, if we could only get our population down to 8 Million, avoid all illegal immigration, and become a homogenous population, refuse citizen ship to anyone not born here or unable to draw a direct familial blood line to here…we could do just that.</p>
<p>I wonder if I’m included in the decline rates, because I was denied and then reapplied and was accepted. </p>
<p>On another note, the House is taking up a measure tying a “doctor fix” to a 10 year delay in the individual mandate. I can’t link anything right now but it’s easily findable. Now, it’s probably not going anywhere but still. A 10-year delay? </p>
<p>If this question is open: “Senior administration officials said there are up to 1.5 million people who now have health insurance through individual or small-group plans that aren’t compliant with Obamacare minimum standards, and who are now potentially eligible for the extension announced Wednesday.”</p>
<p>CF: At the risk of venturing into the forbidden topic area…A system that works for a homogenous population of 9 million people is not simply scalable to a diverse country of 330 million. The example country doesn’t have 50 different states with individual rights.</p>
<p>Doubling or tripling a recipe might work just fine but after a certain point, it just makes a big mess.</p>