Health Care changes

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Norton

Social climber

the Wastelands

Oct 28, 2013 - 02:23pm PT

sounds like blue cross decided that now that you are 40 you are higher risk and raised your
premium

and THAT is exactly what just one of the problems is with the current healthcare system

let's hope you can find a cheaper policy when the exchanges get running better

Dropline

Mountain climber

Somewhere Up There

Oct 28, 2013 - 02:53pm PT

As a small biz owner our experience with health care insurance premium rates has been blech as usual. To keep out current policy with Anthem we will have to pay 9.31% more next year. When we get quotes on the exchanges for various plans, the benefits are fewer and the premiums are higher.

It cracks me up when the Obamacare hucksters say "you can get insurance for about what your cable bill is each month, or your phone bill". BS. With our Anthem plan a healthy 27 year old male will cost $283 a month to insure next year. For fewer benefits, higher deductibles, etc in the exchange for the same employee it's $450.

I'm a bit (a lot) older so I'm about $1,100 a month with either Anthem or on the exchange. Obama won over support in the biz community by promising rates would be held in check. Each year since it's gone up again at 9-13%.

Generally I favor fairly free markets because I think that's the best way to motivate people. In this case though I am in favor of a single payer system. The big winners in this game, hospitals, drug companies, insurance companies, doctors, and lawyers are all way too powerful for ordinary people to ever get a fair shake.

That's why, as a percentage of GDP, as a country we spend double what many other developed countries do on health care.

Health care costs and health care insurance will break a lot of small businesses if these expenses are not reigned in.

Norton

Social climber

the Wastelands

Oct 28, 2013 - 03:03pm PT

It cracks me up when the Obamacare hucksters say "you can get insurance for about what your cable bill is each month, or your phone bill"

prove it

links?

Chaz

Trad climber

greater Boss Angeles area

Oct 28, 2013 - 03:10pm PT

Norton writes:

"prove it
links?"

Just one.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/22/remarks-president-congressional-black-caucus-foundation-phoenix-awards-d

"So just think about that. Knowing you can offer your family the security of health care –- that’s priceless. And now you can do it for less than your cell phone bill. That’s what change looks like."

President Barack Obama

Dropline

Mountain climber

Somewhere Up There

Oct 28, 2013 - 03:25pm PT

Norton, it's hard to cite things you see and hear on the tube. Tube as in TV. But both Obama and some admin rep said words very close to what I quoted, both on television. It made my ears perk up because we're making decisions now at work about health care coverages and costs for 2014.

I think they should scrap the whole thing and go to single payer.

mucci

Trad climber

The pitch of Bagalaar above you

Oct 28, 2013 - 06:17pm PT

Dropped by my individual plan.

Raised my premiums by $210 per month.

Maybe I should just quit my job, and become a titsucker.

Here comes the boommotherfukcers.

NutAgain!

Trad climber

South Pasadena, CA

Oct 28, 2013 - 06:42pm PT

Is there an example anywhere in the world where free market capitalism results in affordable and high quality healthcare for most of the population?

A "free market" implies a buyer and a seller free from the need to do business with each other, free to make alternative choices. If you are sick or dying, or your family members are, then practically speaking you can't walk away from the deal. You'll pay whatever they say it costs to keep your loved one alive.

That is EXACTLY why discussion of free market theories for healthcare should be categorically rejected. Use standard diagnostic codes, with standardized methods of mapping reported symptoms and test results to those diagnoses, and with standard care regimens and defined costs for those regimens, and skip the parasitic insurance companies squeezing a profit out of it. The only useful service one can identify that the insurance company performs is to ferret out frivolous claims and use bulk purchasing power to negotiate down prices with care providers. If the government set the prices for the services, and the government enforced compliance/investigated fraud/etc. Then there is no need for insurance providers.

That seems so much cleaner than a government mandate for insurance while still providing a "free market" choice of options, where there is implicit collusion to keep prices high because the market is as captive as ever. Sometimes compromise is a beeyotch.

I'm hoping the present healthcare landscape is part of the larger juggernaut toward more of a socialized medicine program. It's just a painful intermediate step mandated by many lawmakers dragging their feet on change that will kill the cash cow of health insurance.

Hoser

climber

vancouver

Oct 28, 2013 - 07:17pm PT

^^^ Yup

n canada I don't remember there being much of a difference between the costs. If I was working, or if I wasn't working, it was mostly the same. Health care was there for everyone in a equal way. There was not any deductable.

No deductible

If I dont work or make less than 20g a year its straight up free

If I do work then its 100% covered by my job, plus dental, scripts are 90-100% covered

If I work for myself, my monthly cost is about $67 for full coverage

Curt

climber

Gold Canyon, AZ

Oct 28, 2013 - 07:34pm PT

I think they should scrap the whole thing and go to single payer.

That's the best solution, so Republicans will oppose that most fiercely.

Curt

Sean Garecht

Trad climber

Reno, NV

Oct 28, 2013 - 07:56pm PT

No Norton.

That is not why I was dropped. I was dropped because my current insurance doesn't meet the required Obamacare standards. I already got the 40 year old bump up last year when I turned 40.

I received 3 letters in the mail from Blue Cross stating that things were going to be changing with the upcoming implementation of Obama Care. And they did change, increased prices, and me and millions of other people are now paying considerably moor.

You are quit snarky and quick to dismiss any idea that maybe this Obama Care sucks. I'm not saying that insurance as it was was great, but the powers that be took a hatchet job to the whole industry when a scalpel was needed.

On another note...

Whats up Ron Anderson...You and your boys put up some awesome routes in the Carson Tahoe zone.

TGT

Social climber

So Cal

Oct 28, 2013 - 08:59pm PT

The liar in chief.

[Click to View YouTube Video]

Even NBC now reports the truth.

our sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21213547-obama-admin-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance?lite

Gary

Social climber

Desolation Basin, Calif.

Oct 28, 2013 - 09:26pm PT

By the way, what exactly is the healthcare plan that the candidate YOU voted for put forth?

Romneycare. Obamacare is the plan the Republicans wanted. Why are they against it now?

TGT

Social climber

So Cal

Oct 28, 2013 - 09:35pm PT

rottingjohnny

Sport climber

mammoth lakes ca

Oct 28, 2013 - 10:19pm PT

Yes , part of the blame can be placed on the Repubs for wanting Romney care yet they point the finger at Obama..? I think the Republicans original plan was to give tax credits to the poor so they could afford health care but that plan was so cynical and unrealistic that it never got off the ground..Remember romney's gaff about the 47% leeching off the system...then he turns around and throws out his feeble health care plan...brilliant..

TGT

Social climber

So Cal

Oct 28, 2013 - 10:57pm PT

Snowmassguy

Trad climber

Calirado

Oct 28, 2013 - 11:01pm PT

Obamacare is the result of a bait and switch to buy votes. It worked.

Now we get to watch the wonderfully efficient government try to implement an IT project that is said to be one of the largest and most complicated ever.

Cronies will get rich.

Obamacare will collapse and many will be without health care. Basically the opposite of what was promised will occur.

Writing has been on the wall for quite some time but any criticism is dismissed as partisan.

Go climb but don't hurt yourself in January if you are relying on Obamacare.

If you want to buy a plan in the open market, take that money that you plan to spend on Xmas gifts or that next climbing trip and give it to the insurance companies or the government. That will totally help our economy. Also don't get hurt or sick in early 2014 if you are relying on Obamacare. If you do, you better find religion and pray.

We are F'd.

johntp

Trad climber

socal

Oct 28, 2013 - 11:11pm PT

ObamaCare is just another one of the Liar in Chief's ways of wealth redistribution.

Roger that. My health care plan premium is going up 44%. Heaven forbid I actually get sick or need hospitalization. The deductibles are out the roof.

A turd is a turd and Obama is shoving it down our throats. "Affordable" my ass.

peladob

Mountain climber

Mason City, Iowa

Oct 28, 2013 - 11:32pm PT

How bout this little gem...

This is an exerpt from the NBC news blog...

President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.