<p>Eight friggin million! I just caught that.</p>
<p>No Flossy, I asked what you thought could be the reason for a very profitable private company failing to staff anywhere near adequately for a long-known "planned event. " I offered two explanations. </p>
<p>Which do you think it is? (It could be both) Did you have a third explanation? </p>
<p>Well, it seems possible that a third explanation could involve the fact that the government website has no back end making the transfer of data somewhat cumbersome That’s just a guess. It’s pretty clear there are plenty of problems.</p>
<p>I also agree with Texas that calling these insurers private at this point is doubtful since their customers are mandated.</p>
<p>Flossy, I’m talking about the records that DID get through to Anthem. I’m talking about people who successfully enrolled and only had to do one more thing – pay the first months premium. There were no unknowns at that stage. Anthem only had to hire enough warm bodies to take payments. And they didn’t come close to meeting the demand. </p>
<p>Look, obviously you don’t want to admit that Anthem is inefficient or that it puts profits above its costumers. Nor do you want to admit that a tidal wave of people enrolled. I get that. But it’s all nonetheless true. </p>
<p>Re private – no one was “mandated” to Anthem. In fact, Anthem didn’t have to participate at all in the exchange if they didn’t want to. And they and their shareholders get to keep their substantial profits. How are they not a private company? </p>
<p>I don’t disagree with any of that last paragraph. I love how read minds and predict the future, LasMa.lol.</p>
<p>I’m not defending Anthem. Of course, they’re swamped. And of course, their trying to make a profit. And, since they are paid by the government now with subsidies and Medicaid and a bail-out whatever happens, they will. The numbers of sign-ups was never my issue. It’s the law, so I’m among those who never got counting thing.</p>
<p><a href=“How Obamacare Leaves Some People Without Doctors | HuffPost Impact”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;
<p>All stories are from Covered California. People can’t get a covered doctor matched with a covered hospital. This is why the numbers don’t matter. It’s just more p!ssed off people.</p>
<p>TatinG, thanks for the article. Thank god I don’t have the Obamacare Blue Shield plan in my region. The network is pitifully small. I feel sorry for people who need specialized care because they will be screwed when attempting to access it. BTW, Blue Cross is only marginally better. </p>
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<p>Do you take me for a fool, TatinG? You guys have been prating for months about how an insurer can’t throw someone off his policy until he is three months arrears in payments. Therefore, through the end of March, everyone is still going to be listed as being on their policy, even deadbeats, because it takes three months to become three months in arrears. Therefore, your doctor is just beginning to find out now, in April, whether he has provided care to deadbeats who will turn out not to be insured. He certainly had no information about his rate of deadbeats when he initiated his pay-even-if-the-insurance-company-says-you’re-insured policy.</p>
<p>CF: you have been misreading or misinterpreting my initial post on this. Yes, there were deadbeats before and deadbeats after. However, with the new ACA policies if a person does not pay the premiums, the insurance company will not tell the doctor until, as you say, the non-payer is three months late. For the first month, the insurance company will pay for medical services. For the next two, not only will the insurance companies keep this information from the doctors, they won’t pay. Naturally, to protect their practices and the people they employ, doctors want cash up front. Under the old policies, there was no 3 month grace period with the doctors or hospitals taking the fall for non-payment. No wonder doctors don’t want to accept these policies at all? Would you enter into a contract in which you might perform services for 2 months and not get paid?</p>
<p>deleted for re-composition :-* </p>
<p>I see. So a doctor is making everyone pay up front because there might be deadbeats, more deadbeats than previously? That was your entire point? Yawn.</p>
<p>And another one bites the dust:</p>
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<p><a href=“New data signal smaller jump in health care costs”>http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/16/lower-rise-in-health-care-costs/7515185/</a></p>
<p>A 7% increase would mean $75/month for our family, in addition to my husband going into a more expensive age bracket. This is THE cheapest policy I could find. We haven’t been able to increase our hourly rate for engineering services for years. It’s discouraging.</p>
<p>Tatin, where do you get this? My insurer said they will pay. Until the point when they cancel the policy. They will then seek to recoup any payments made to the doctor. And the doctor will have his own policies- likely billing first, before the collections practices cited earlier will kick into action. In the past, any patient portions unpaid in X months would also go to collections. </p>
<p>None of my recent 2014 medical services required up-front payments beyond co-pays. (One specialist didn’t want even the co-pay, but I named the amount and suggested I take care of it on the spot.) Later, when checking costs for the next procedure, that doctor’s billing rep volunteered that when I got the bill, I could go on a payment plan, if I wished. When I had the CT scan, they didn’t ask for a dime. Both D2 and I have procedures scheduled (different med practices, one in-office, one outpatient at the hospital.) No parties asked for a deposit. I have more examples.</p>
<p>One can keep citing some media articles about individuals (generally extreme cases) but not expect everyone to draw the same conclusions for everyone else. It’s kind of futile, when others of us are seeing it operate differently. </p>
<p>The age brackets are one year now. So every year, everybody’s premium would go up about 2.6% even if medical costs stayed the same, just because the person got a year older. I assume the 7% is on top of that; I assume that, e.g., the premium for a 25-year-old goes up 7%.</p>
<p>“So every year, everybody’s premium would go up about 2.6% even if medical costs stayed the same”</p>
<p>This is a huge change from how it worked pre-Obamacare. Subscribers were in 5-year age bands where your rates were unchanged until you graduated to the next age band. In a family policy, Blue Cross used the age of the youngest spouse to determine the cost of the entire family, and Blue Shield used the age of the subscriber. So most families would have the youngest spouse as the subscriber of record for Blue Shield to keep the premiums as low as possible. Now the age of both spouses are used to determine premiums without the 5-year age bands. This is a major reason why the premiums skyrocketed for families under Obamacare.</p>
<p>Of course, you wouldn’t know any of this CF because you weren’t in the individual market.</p>
<p>I wasn’t in the individual market, but I’m fortunate to be able to understand mathematics, so I can see that what you say doesn’t make sense, GP. Premiums won’t skyrocket for everybody with a switch from five-year age bands to one-year age bands. Rather, premiums will go up, but not much, for about half the people, and go down, but not much, for the other half. </p>
<p>Premiums don’t go up for <em>everybody</em> with a different way of allocating costs. Premiums only go up for everybody if total costs go up, which they did with the ACA, primarily because more expensive subscribers are now allowed to buy insurance, and secondarily because some new things have to be insured against.</p>
<p>Calmom already explained, at least twice, how rates increased annually. And on top of that, jumped as you hit age markers. </p>
<p>You’re wrong. Here is a hypothetical. If the husband is in the 61-65 age bracket and the wife is in the 56-60 band, then the policy is priced as if they were both in the lower age band. The cost with respect to age is fixed the entire 5 years until she reaches 61. That is huge. Now the husband and wife are both priced individually, so if she is priced as a 58-year-old and he as a 63-year-old, the premiums are going to be much higher, and as you said will increase each year… I can promise you that resulted in a huge difference in premiums. I know because it happened to me. </p>
<p>The difference is that this is a nice theoretical exercise for you but real life for me.</p>