<p>“Jeez, if I’m driving through that area and get into an accident, I’ll make sure that before I go into cardiac arrest to exclaim, “Don’t judge me by my beat up car, I have health insurance!””</p>
<p>But those who want to drive the better cars missed the point about the county hospital having the highest rated trauma center around here! So if you drive an old car and in an accident, you might get better care. :D</p>
<p>I think Romani hit the nail on the head when she said she was asked for insurance upfront. The point of driving to one or the other is that if a person does not have insurance when moved to the luxury car trauma center, the ambulance might need to turn around and take them to the county where they will treat you with or without insurance. So the ER admit practices may have a lot to do with it.</p>
<p>Yes, missed that point. Maybe the ambulance drivers don’t like the rich people. Seems like they ought to decide based on if people need to go to the closest facility because of time considerations, or the one that provides the best treatment for their injury, not how they appear.</p>
<p>Ok good. I can save money on a rental car when I visit Texas. :)</p>
<p>I think cartera45 makes a good point about living in the proximity to good medical care. When I visited Vermont, it did cross my mind. Where are the hospitals?</p>
<p>busdriver - Houston has most hospitals in a 1 to 2 mile stretch. Sometimes the distance can make a difference but for these two specific hospitals it might not.</p>
<p>bd, that’s very interesting to me. I am indeed curious to know whether that is state law or hospital practice (adds to to-do list). I wonder how that works in places where the overwhelming majority of state citizens are insured (like Mass. or something) versus places with high uninsured rates (like here in MI). Which state was that in? Washington? I’m just curious because I’d like to look up the uninsured rate there for my own interest.</p>
<p>Its not March anymore. You have to be in by February 15th or you will end up getting taxed.</p>
<p>"On Wednesday, the Obama administration confirmed that citizens must sign-up for health coverage by Feb. 15, 2014, according to the Washington Post. That means the end of the open enrollment period is about six weeks earlier than originally announced. "</p>
<p>Around here we have two hospitals. One affiliated with a first class public university and one with a first class private. They do research together. </p>
<p>At the private there is no waiting. At the public, a little longer waiting. Care is excellent at both. </p>
<p>Where I used to live outside of Chicago, they shut down the trauma center at one of the hospitals. It was highly rated, but it was full of gang cases from just over the border in the city. No insurance. Dangerous to be there. Shut it down. </p>
<p>They opened one fifteen minutes the other way, just far enough away from murder central, where everyone with insurance goes now anyway. </p>
<p>I doubt they will reopen. Docs were all leaving.</p>
<p>My girls are 19 and 24. This year while they went in for their annual checkup, both of them were found with mass in their breast. D2 was earlier this year. She had sonic gram done and found it wasn’t even a mass. D1 had her test done today and we were relieved to know that it was just a dense tissue. We didn’t have to pay for either test, but I am sure they were expensive. I am just wondering if people are getting a lot more unnecessary tests done nowadays.</p>
<p>That is unbelievable, oldfort, both girls. You must have been incredibly stressed. I’m starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with the machines or procedures, there are so many cases of suspicious masses. I had to get a sonogram after a mammogram because of a suspicious mass (totally freaked me out). Turned out to be nothing, they said it was just the way I was positioned. Seems like they could have figured this stuff out a little better by now!</p>
<p>That would be interesting to find out what you discover, romani. I suspect that the vast number of people in my city are insured, but I don’t know about the state overall.</p>
<p>“Over half of all Americans will be diagnosed at one point in their lives with an invasive cancer,” Jain said. Without understanding the many layers of cancer, “we’re missing a huge part of American experience, culture and economics.”</p>
<p>“She says, for example, that young adults have “been completely erased from the cancer puzzle” because many oncologists believe the catchall “cancer” is an old person’s disease. She notes that there are more than 70,000 diagnoses of cancer in young adults each year.”</p>
<p>Terrific…so I guess that means I need to hunt for DS by February. Since DD won’t be 26 until end of March, I guess we do her by March 1 to be on the safe side!</p>
<p>Thumper, there has been no change in open enrollment dates. </p>
<p>I believe that the open enrollment period is the same as always: until March 31, 2014.</p>
<p>However, the tax penalty applies to anyone who is not insured by April 1st. (Technically the times could be different – I think basically you get a tax penalty if you were uninsured for more than 3 months at any time of the year, but for 2014 those first 3 months are going to be the critical ones.)</p>
<p>You can’t be assured of being insured by April 1 unless you sign on earlier. So Feb 15th is kind of like a priority deadline for college admissions or financial aid – one of those dates that you should meet if it is important to you to get the full benefit of signing up. But if your son already has insurance, then there would probably would be no gap in coverage and he wouldn’t run into any problems. That is, he could probably sign up in March on his state exchange in March for coverage to begin May 1, and of course continue to pay premiums on his old policy through the end of April.</p>
<p>Remember my “authoritative source” rule – there is so much bad info floating out there in new articles and even on well-meaning, private consumer oriented sites that it is a mistake to rely on any of that. </p>
<p>If there was a change in the open enrollment period, there would be an official government notice of some sort to document that change. </p>
<p>Ah! I understand. This February date is for those who currently have no insurance, and want to be absolutely sure to have coverage on time to avoid paying the penalty.</p>
<p>calmom: last week, someone from Covered California (CC) was interviewed on the local all-news radio station and he noted that, while the Open Enrollment period does not end until March 31 by law, from a practical matter it ends March 15 in California if one wants to avoid the tax penalty (for no insurance). He said that CC is allowed/requires 15 days to process the application, so for coverage to be effective April 1, they would need the app by mid-March. Apps that are submitted by the end of March will not result in coverage until mid-April, which is too late to avoid the tax penalty.</p>
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<p>dstark: the federal contribution will automatically reduce over time, leaving the states to pick up the increasing differential.</p>
<p>But the point is, that is only a concern for someone who is uninsured. Anyone who is currently insured but wants to go to the exchange for whatever reason (better coverage than grandfathered policy, better rates, different level of coverage, subsidy eligibility, etc.) can wait until the very last day. (Though unless the web sites are running a lot better by then, I’d suggest giving it some more leeway. It’s reasonable to expect a particularly high load on the sites on March 31). </p>
<p>Also, I believe that the penalty is prorated – I’ll double check on that, but I’m pretty sure that a month late for enrollment is not going to be all that onerous.</p>
<p>For purposes of paragraph (1)(A), the monthly penalty amount with respect to any taxpayer for any month during which any failure described in subsection (b)(1) occurred is an amount equal to 1/12 of the greater of the following amounts:
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<p>In year #1 (2014), the penalty is either $95 or 1% of taxable gross income, whichever is greater. So on a per-month basis, that would be about $8 or 0.083% of income. </p>
<p>I think going uninsured for any period is a much bigger problem. It’s hard to imagine any sort of medical expense that might crop up during the month that would not cost the person more than the per-month penalty.</p>