Affordable Care Act Scene 2 - Insurance Premiums

[tom1944]

<p>I would venture to guess anyone who had a policy where the rates went up 50% had a policy with a very low lifetime cap. </p>

[Cardinal_Fang]

<p>Tom1944, that’s not a good guess. GP’s insurance didn’t have a low cap. What it did have was healthy people… Employer-paid insurance was a lot more expensive in total, for the same coverage, than individual insurance, because employer-paid insurance already had to cover everybody. Now individual insurance has to cover everybody too, so it costs more.</p>

[catahoula]

<p>

There is value in verifiable information.

So the problem with what you feel to be bs is that someone less discriminating than yourself might swallow it whole? </p>

<p>What’s your position on: “if you like your plan, you can keep it” and “…save the typical family $2500/year in premium cost”? Harmless bs? Caveat emptor?</p>

[Goldenpooch]

<p>“Employer-paid insurance was a lot more expensive in total, for the same coverage, than individual insurance, because employer-paid insurance already had to cover everybody.”</p>

<p>Wrong! My individual insurance was cheaper because I had a $5,200 deductible which I had to pay before any outpatient/inpatient care (except for one preventative exam a year) and all drugs. </p>

[patsmom]

<p>

There is no penalty for someone who claims a higher income in order to qualify for a subsidy, and then their year-end income turns out to be less – they are just treated as if their income was exactly 100% of FPL.

@calmom, can you expound on this? Why is there no penalty? This might be my son’s situation if his income doesn’t end up matching what he predicted.</p>

[emilybee]

<p>“My insurance was cancelled and the new plan offered to me cost 60% more than the plan I had. I wasn’t being moved to a new age band, so that had nothing to do with the rate increase There is nothing anecdotal about that. The cheerleaders said I was whining and undeserving because I had gotten a great deal before Obamacare, as I was the beneficiary of those with preexisting conditions who had gotten screwed by the insurance companies.”</p>

<p>bwahhhhhwahhhh. </p>

[lookingforward]

<p>the new plan offered to me cost 60% more than the plan I had<br>
*The cheerleaders said I was whining *
Oh, quit manipulating what was said, to keep an argument running. You toss out sound bites. </p>

<p>Same to cat: What’s your position on: “if you like your plan, you can keep it” and “…save the typical family $2500/year in premium cost”? Harmless bs? Caveat emptor?
You have the ability to look up the accurate quotes. Why not do that? </p>

[dietz199]

<p>

bwahhhhhwahhhh.

Says the emotionally driven cheerleader…</p>

[dietz199]

<p>

1.“With respect to the pledge I made that if you like your plan you can keep it . the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate.”</p>

<p>President Barack Obama, news conference, Nov. 14, 2013

</p>

<p><a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost;

[actingmt]

<p>That quote was delivered sheepishly and after the fact, when it wasn’t exactly news. btw. And, there is more than a small amount of evidence that it was a everyone involved knew perfectly well that it was never going to be true. Disgraceful.</p>

[lookingforward]

<p>Nope. Don’t look at some media cuteness to shore up your position. Look at what was actually said. You can do that.</p>

[dietz199]

<p>And from a publication with the official source it self…BarackObama.com</p>

<p>

Under the Obama plan, the typical family
will save up to $2,500 every year through:…

</p>

<p>2/3 of the way down the fist page…in bold type for emphasis…from the source…</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/factsheet_healthcare.pdf”>http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/factsheet_healthcare.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[dietz199]

<p>And…

Obama (Bristol, Va., June 5): In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year. And we’ll do it by investing in disease prevention, not just disease management; by investing in a paperless health care system to reduce administrative costs; and by covering every single American and making sure that they can take their health care with them if they lose their job. … And we won’t do all this twenty years from now, or ten years from now. We’ll do it by the end of my first term as president of the United States.

WE’LL DO IT BY THE END OF MY FIRST TERM… (sorry, don’t know how to bold).</p>

<p>So there, googled, quoted, posted, verified.</p>

<p><a href=“Obama's Inflated Health 'Savings' - FactCheck.org”>http://www.factcheck.org/2008/06/obamas-inflated-health-savings/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[catahoula]

<p>Long as there’s someone, somewhere, that’ll spin unpleasant truths into a more palatable reality, facts don’t mean much. </p>

<p>I blame the internet.</p>

[lje62]

<p>" lje: we lost our group coverage.
As for “you can keep,” that makes a nice ‘headline’ for the naysayers. Ever read the conditions under which you can keep it? " </p>

<p>Why should I have to read the conditions ? The POTUS made that promise ( and others ) multiple times in his attempt to secure votes and implement this plan . I saw it from multiple sources , multiple networks . There was never a " please see disclaimer " warning on any of them.
I don’t think it was a headline for naysayers. I have also seen multiple supporters of the POTUS complain about losing their insurance that they were happy with…public people, not someone’s hairdresser or Joe the Plumber.
I know a lot of local small business owners that are in the same position as we are, including MY hairdresser </p>

[actingmt]

<p>There were no conditions. There was a “Period”. Let’s be accurate LF. That was a big one.</p>

[calmom]

<p>@patsmom

@calmom, can you expound on this? Why is there no penalty?This might be my son’s situation if his income doesn’t end up matching what he predicted.

</p>

<p>Because the law was written with the assumption that (a) all states would expand Medicaid,and (b) there would be no incentive for anyone to claim a higher than anticipated income, given that Medicaid is free an all subsidized policies require some sort of premium payment. So the only person who is harmed economically by overstating their income would be the taxpayer – who has to pay money for health care rather than getting premium-free health care via Medicaid. </p>

<p>In any case, given that it is a tax scheme, how would any penalty be enforced? If someone understates their income, then there is no penalty – but there is additional tax owed to repay the government for whatever they accepted in advance premium credits. </p>

<p>When the Supreme Court invalidated the Medicaid expansion provisions of the law, that created a situation where in roughly half the states, there is no a strong incentive to lie and overstate income – it’s the only way to get coverage. </p>

<p>But there is still no mechanism to tax the person who taxes a premium subsidy and then turns out to have too little income. It doesn’t make sense to be charging taxes to people who make so little that they probably don’t owe anything at all. </p>

<p>The only other way that someone could be penalized would be a prosecution for tax fraud – but how does the government go about proving that someone who anticipates earning poverty level wages had the pre-existing intent to earn less? Plus the real culprits in that sort of situation are the states that refused to expand medicare-- not the poor citizens who were left out in the cold by an unanticipated Supreme Court ruling. So I don’t see any likelihood of individuals being prosecuted for fraud-- you’d have to think of an extreme case, and given the fact that the equities favor the person who is trying to comply with the law by getting some sort of insurance --I just don’t see hit happening. </p>

[calmom]

<p>@dietz199‌

“, the typical family will save up to $2,500 every year”

</p>

<p>Three very important words in that sentence:
a) “typical”
b) “up to”</p>

<p>The typical American family has a household income of $51,000.</p>

<p>The typical American household consists of 2.54 people. </p>

<p>“up to” reflects a maximum. </p>

<p>The typical high school student will have a cumulative score of 1500 on the SAT. </p>

<p>However, it is possible for students to score “up to” 2400. </p>

<p>Actually, I think that many people under ACA are saving well over $2500 a year, even without factoring in subsidies, if they were paying higher rates because of pre-existing conditions-- I can think of many examples just of individuals, based on what the difference in costs quoted to me (no health problems) and many others I knew who were being priced out of the market. But then again you might say that they weren’t "typical’. But based on the figures, the “typical” family is subsidy-eligible. I think the actual numbers are something like 60%. </p>

[dietz199]

<p>

The typical American household consists of 2.54 people.

</p>

<p>Well, glad we aren’t typical…that .54 person would probably run up the medical costs…no matter what the plan…</p>

[Goldenpooch]

<p>The typical American household (whatever that is) has managed to pass over my household. </p>

<p>In all seriousness, there is no way the typical American household has experienced a reduction in premiums. Since at least 80% of the insured get their insurance through their employers, there is no way these people are paying less for insurance these days. I don’t know any small businesses or large employers that have reduced insurance premiums paid by their workers. I would wager most people in the individual market are not paying less today even with subsidies. There may be some who had individual insurance prior to Obamacare who are now receiving subsidies, but probably quite a few of these subsidized people were not paying for insurance pre-Obamacare. Of course, we know with certainty that the unsubsidized in the individual market are not paying less today than before Obamacare.</p>