I think the 3-month protection kicks in after the first payment, but that first payment is needed in order to seal the deal. I’ve heard several missed first payment “horror” stories – I put “horror” in quotes because it seems to be a problem experienced by procrastinators</p>
<p>In the future you might try to encourage your employees to set up autopay via automatic withdrawal from their accounts – maybe offer some sort of incentive on your end to employees who do. I mean, maybe you can offer something like a $50 gift card to employees who come in with a copy of a bank statement showing the automatic withdrawal from their account for insurance. I don’t know whether or not there is any legal impediment to doing that – I’m just thinking that you want to nudge your employees in a certain direction-- I probably just got that idea because I logged into the ATT web site a few minutes ago and was greeted with a pop-up message offering me a $10 gift card if I would sign up for autopay with them … I declined. </p>
<p>The problem in the past was people who WANTED insurance but could NOT get it because the insurers refused to sell it to them at a price they could reasonably afford.</p>
<p>The point of the individual mandate is NOT to force people who don’t want or don’t care about insurance to buy it, but to provide a mechanism for financing the guaranteed-issue aspect of the ACA, as well as to address problems faced by health care providers who are legally bound to provide care to patients who show up in their emergency room, by increasing the proportion of patients who will have some form of coverage to pay the bills. But any individual who doesn’t want to buy insurance has the option of foregoing insurance and paying more in taxes instead. </p>
<p>texaspg, as I recall, you were trying to decide between different ways to provide health insurance coverage to the employees of your nonprofit organization. What did you decide to do? Sounds like they are on the exchange?</p>
<p>So, $95 in 2014 and $325 in 2015 for individuals. Are you suggesting that once a $95 penalty has been paid ‘we’ should then not pick up the any additional costs incurred by an individual? So now any individual who does not carry insurance is in the situation due to their own choice. And, any uninsured individual as of today should be precluded from heaping out rage on the rest of us? And, should be precluded from participating in any healthCARE? </p>
<p>It’s post ACA, anyone and everyone can go out and get a policy. So, no one should be without insurance. And if one now chooses to be uninsured - should society decide to let the consequences of this choice run their course? Or do we still have different rules for different folks?</p>
<p>“It’s post ACA, anyone and everyone can go out and get a policy. So, no one should be without insurance. And if one now chooses to be uninsured - should society decide to let the consequences of this choice run their course?”</p>
<p>That is not true. The people who would get medicaid in some states because they are too poor to afford any other health insurance - are not able to get medicaid in the states which refused to expand, so are still uninsured. Service providers in those states will still need to increase the cost of medical services for the insured to recoup their loses and some will have to shut their doors. There are many hospitals, for instance, in those states which are in deep financial trouble because of the refusal to expand medicaid. Also, illegal immigrants are shut out of participating in ACA. Service providers will still need to cover the cost of their unpaid medical expenses so it will be reflected in the cost of medical services of the insured, too. </p>
<p>As for the one’s who choose to pay a penalty, instead of purchasing insurance, they would be billed for all their medical expenses and anything unpaid will eventually go to collection agencies. But, since there is no guarantee these people will be able pay anything - the costs the service providers incur will also be reflected in increased medical expenses for everyone. </p>
<p>I think there are a lot of people who foolishly believe, because they are healthy, they don’t need insurance. They will eventually get a lesson on what happens when they get sick and rack up hundred of thousands of dollars in medical bills. If nothing else, their credit rating will take a significant hit - which has a number of ramifications. </p>
<p>@dietz — $95 is the minimum tax penalty for individuals who don’t have insurance. The maximum equates to the average cost of a bronze level policy. It is $95 + 1 percent of taxable income. Maximum for an individual in 2014 is slightly under $2500. </p>
<p>This article in the LA Times discusses the huge problem of Medi-Cal enrollees struggling to find any doctors to treat them. Unbelievably, “Medi-Cal, the state’s second-largest expense after schools, is expected to cover one in three Californians by next year.” If that doesn’t surprise you, then try this one: “just one-third of physicians take 80% of Medi-Cal appointments.” </p>
<p>Reimbursement rates are so low, no doctor wants to see these people. A state legislator is inundated with complaints because directories of providers are inaccurate or include doctors who aren’t taking new patients. </p>
<p>What a joke. All these people have insurance; the only problem is that gets you almost nothing in value.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, contrary to everything I heard on this thread about Obamacare enrollees paying their premiums, according to this article, enrollment is shrinking much faster than many pundits predicted. </p>
<p>“The nation’s third-largest health insurer had 720,000 people sign up for exchange coverage as of May 20, a spokesman confirmed to IBD. At the end of June, it had fewer than 600,000 paying customers. Aetna expects that to fall to “just over 500,000” by the end of the year. That would leave Aetna’s paid enrollment down as much as 30% from that May sign-up tally.”</p>
<p>It turns out Anthem used certain assumptions that the Insurance Department rejected. They assumed medical costs in general would be rising sharply, which doesn’t seem to be happening. They also made some assumptions about their subscribers’ health that the Insurance Department disagreed with, and they underestimated their payments from the federal three R’s plans according to the Insurance Department.</p>
<p>I wonder if Anthem’s initial request was in good faith. I suspect it was not.</p>
<p>The state did release a plain average-- the plain, simple average of what each person pays. How much will the person pay this year? How much did they pay last year? What’s the difference, in percent? Average that for everyone. That’s the number we want to know. </p>
<p>To their credit, the state didn’t release stupid numbers for innumerate journalists, like the average by county, or the average by health plan, or whatever other dumb calculation this journalist incorrectly thought would make sense.</p>
<p>The median increase would be interesting to know, as well. Median by person, I need hardly say. Averaging numbers from a county with 20,000 people and numbers from a county with 5,000,000, without weighting, is just meaningless.</p>
<p>dietz, why are you linking the article about what the insurance commissioner says about premium increases 2014 to reports about premium increases for 2015? Jones says the rates went up a lot for 2014. We’ve talked a lot here about why premiums went up for 2014: more benefits required, no pre-existing condition exclusion, both genders pay the same rates, and so forth.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t inform us about what is happening to rates in 2015. </p>
<p>Cheapskate Chicago Cubs reportedly cut their ground crews’ hours to keep employees under 30 hours to avoid paying for insurance. Then it rained, and they were embarrassed on national TV when their undermanned ground crew couldn’t cover the field:</p>
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