Wow. We never had to have any proof of insurance even for athletics teams.
I did have to have him covered for sleep away camp, but I would never think not to have medical insurance anyway.
So do you buy the cheapest plan possible and just pay OOP for the medical care by doctors you want to go to?
Real simple: I rely on the subsidy. At age 62 I would not be able to afford the premium even for a high deductible plan…
My kids have employer paid insurance, but the medicaid expansion helped my son when he was in his final year of grad school and beyond, as it was about 8 months post-grad before he found his job. And without ACA he would be very limited in options-- he has a state job now, but even within his department a lot of his “co-workers” are actually private consultants, and there seems to be a lot of movement between state/private — but without ACA he wouldn’t be able to consider anything that didn’t come with insurance. (Same story essentially for my DD, except that she’s married now which provides an extra layer of employer-protection – post-wedding, they both have employers who would offer generous coverage benefits for spouses).
That sounds like a school district policy to limit their liability.
Encouraging kids to see a doctor and be healthy sounds good to me.
Beats discriminating against a kid with diabetes or another pre existing condition from participating.
my grad-school-part-time-job-with-no-benefits son currently has it. needs it due to a pre-existing condition.
And yes, his premium went up by 30%.
I don’t buy that 50% have actually been hurt. Something like 38% of adult Americans get insurance through large employers, and there has been little to no impact on them. Medicare covers another 14%, and again their insurance was not impacted. So that is 52% of adults right there. 7.4% of non-elderly adults gained insurance via Medicaid expansion from the ACA. I am pretty darned sure they are not saying the ACA hurt them. That right there is 59% of Americans whose coverage was not hurt or clearly improved under the ACA.
Another 2.3 million young adults got to stay on their parents’ plans. They are not griping. 2.6 million adults are still in the Medicaid gap because their states chose not to expand Medicaid. They aren’t griping about the ACA, unless they think it didn’t go far enough to help them.
And on top of that, a LOT of people are pretty happy with their ACA-affected insurance.
So I call BS on the idea that 50% of Americans were “hurt”. Many of them feel politically aggrieved, or don’t like that their tax dollars may be going to expand Medicaid in some states, but their insurance was unchanged or improved. Lots of people seem to blame their climbing premium, deductibles, and copays on the ACA. They forget that those things were climbing rapidly before the ACA, and it is no surprise that they continue to climb. The ACA was NOT really set up to level out the costs of health care. Example: drug companies were mostly left out of the ACA regulations – essentially no political deal could be cut with them, and there was concern that the ACA would not pass if they tried to put limitations on drug cost increases. THAT is an area that is ripe for tweaking in the ACA, IMHO. Not that we are headed that way… but it would be logical next step if there was a will to improve instead of destroy the ACA.
I know many people whose premiums went up who blame the ACA. As though premiums never went up before that.
Well, health care seems to be the realm of unreasonable expectations. People want all the best health care they can get and do not want to consider cost at all (either individually or indirectly for employer or government paid costs). So almost any health care reform will lead to disappointment about something, even if the reform did not cause the disappointment.
Is there any possibility we will ever go to a single payer system in the US?
If all health plans, even employer plans, must meet ACA provisions, then many workers are complaining about increased premiums and dramatic increases in deductibles, due to ACA rules improving their coverage.
After a lifetime of self-employment and high deductible individual plans, I do feel that now many of my friends who are employed by large companies do now understand my prior whining
.
ACA was a huge blessing and a small curse for our family. My husband lost his job and acquired a pre existing condition in the same year. He had the low cost employer insurance for the family. We had to cling to COBRA and the premiums were a rude awakening if you’ve been insured through employers forever.
I tried to get independent insurance for the family but husband was denied so I could only cover D and I until Obamacare came in and I was able to get insurance for him. Luckily he is government insured now.
But when Obamacare kicked in we suddenly lost our independent insurance because we were not grandfathered and forced to go on the exchange. Premiums were a huge shock and it was a personal mess for me to try to predict income. Self employed with very large fluctuation each year. I don’t even know what the final income will be until end if year. I have no way to fill it out accurately and am constantly getting in trouble.
But premiums are killing us. It is inexcusable that our premium went up 10% first year and 37% this year. Something is wrong somewhere. Costs did not rise 47% in 2 yrs.
So I think there has to be some kind of cap for yearly increases because I can guarantee that most people’s incomes didn’t rise 47% in the last two years. This is probably the one thing that pissed off the voters. I’m guessing they forgot about all the good parts of the plan
So…bottom line. I need the ability to be self employed and buy insurance. Pre existing and coverage for kids to 26 are important.
But I lost my prior insurance for no reason at all and don’t know why we were forced onto the exchange.
"But I lost my prior insurance for no reason at all and don’t know why we were forced onto the exchange.
because your prior health insurance company could not afford to cover all of the new required elements of ACA and still make a hefty profit. to pay its top executives millions of dollars each year.
But the insurers deliberately priced lower in the first years to compete for customers, and rates overall were kept down by the reinsurance and risk corridor programs, which have now expired.
Interesting how anecdotes are now equivalent to scientific data to some when it fits their worldview.
I suggest looking at different other sources and reading the stories of people who really got hurt by ACA and realize that for many it was a terrible idea that economically hit their families. And those people did not take this hilt on them lying down. And the article below actually under-reports the problem because the issues cited within because the issues got worse since the article was written two years ago and costs doubled for most in that time frame, hill their wages were flat.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/here-s-who-obamacare-hurt-the-most-175034164.html
Ironically the article above tries to put the good spin on things. However, obviously, there were more of the types of people in the article above than the supposed “people in the know” realized.
Overall, living in a bubble with the same people talking to each other and believing what they want and validating their own projections leads to “shocking” surprises that really are no surprise for many others outside the bubble. It is clear that the number of people who did not benefit from ACA clearly outnumbered those that do, at least on the day that counting numbers really mattered.
And this is where the rubber hit the road and melted in place.
It turns out that the ACA lost most support in counties where the median income was just over $50,000, i.e., the level where subsidies stopped. One way to “visualize” the impact at this income level is the ACA literally took away many families’ annual vacation and discretionary spending.
For example, the current slowdown in the restaurant industry directly tracks with increasing ACA premiums - this leads to fewer jobs etc. throughout the community, and a lowering of the communities’ well-being.
Economically, in the aggregate, there is no free lunch, However, the invisible man is invisible no more. Even though he was never really invisible, just obscured by the euphoria of others getting something for less than it really costs.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-non-affordable-care-acts-restaurant-recession-1477863331
Why is that inexcusable?
Insurance companies had to estimate costs based upon how sick they expected the overall pool to be. It turned out that those who joined were more sick than expected, while the healthy candidates judged (correctly) that they were being overcharged, and decided to stay away. Many rational people predicted exactly this.
IMO, they need to pass a law that says that preexisting conditions can’t be denied coverage as long as the patient is continuously covered - no lapses. So you can switch and shop around.
Single payer will create long lines and prevent choice. I have a lifelong friend that has lived in England for 10 years, so I am very familiar with the the frustrations of that system.
To answer the original post, the 26 YO limit and preexisting conditions are the benefits, but I believe the market can bring lower prices than the government.
Maybe I live in a different place than others here but in 2008 when ACA was proposed insurance premiums were rising rapidly in employee sponsored plans as well as those purchased by individuals in the marketplace. That’s one of the things that led to a large number of uninsured. And there IS a cost to the community at large for uninsured people…hospitals who treat and are not reimbursed (so go to the county/municipality/state govt for $ in relief) among other things.
Just tossing ACA doesn’t necessarily get us to an efficient, affordable health care system. But it certainly does get us more uninsured citizens. Pick your poison
Bzss 2 things. England is not the only system of national care.
Would the English scrap NHS warts and all and replace it with our system prior to ACA?
@bzss7x So basically you’re saying let’s keep the parts of ACA everyone likes and wants, and pass laws to keep insurance money from making money, never mind the economics linking all of these factors in the price the insured pay. You cannot have a for-profit insurance system where the insurers can’t minimize the risks they are exposed to when they are required to insure people who will use more than what they put into the system. It just doesn’t work.