Obamacare Higher Premiums and Deductibles are in the Future.

[Papageorgio]

http://Big Increases Obamacare Premiums and Deductibles Coming November

FTA:

The Obama administration postponed a portion of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act in order to avoid paying the political consequences of a market disruption in the group insurance sector. If new premium pricing proposals from insurer filings in the states of Virginia and Washington come to pass, the White House may have no way out of accountability for their health-care reform folly.

When Obamacare first rolled out last fall, the failure of the federal and state exchanges were only the first signs of disaster. Premiums spiked upward in both the individual and group markets, and insurers raised deductibles and narrowed provider networks to save themselves money. Millions of people lost their existing insurance plans in the individual market, and many ended up in plans that either didn’t fit or cost far more than they spent in the past.

The law’s supporters claim that the higher prices result from better coverage, but that depends on one’s perspective. The main point of Obamacare was to provide insurance to the uninsured, but the “enrollment” numbers showed that precious few of those actually gained coverage. The White House announcement of 8 million enrollees turned out to be more like 6.65 million when discounting those who hadn’t paid their first premium, just barely above the estimated 5-6 million who lost their existing plans after the coverage mandates were imposed.

The numbers get worse when looking at how many of these enrollees were previously uninsured. Earlier estimates put that number at around a third, but a new study from the McKinsey Center for US Health System Reform pegs the number lower at 26 percent. When filtering out those who have paid their premium, the number drops to 22 percent of the administration’s claimed enrollees, or about 1.7 million people.

Most of the individual-market enrollments were simply churn created by the market disruption of Obamacare itself. Those enrollments barely made a dent in the claimed numbers of the uninsured, estimates of which range between 30-40 million.

Now that insurers have seen the composition of their new risk pools under Obamacare, they have to calculate their new pricing levels for state and federal regulators. The pricing jump for 2014 was more speculative, based on the presumed demographic composition of incoming enrollees. The pricing proposals from Virginia and Washington indicate that the new enrollments made the risk pools riskier than first thought.

Rate-proposal filings in the state of Washington show the four largest insurers proposing average increases across their plans ranging from 8.1 percent to 11.2 percent in a single year. Jonathan Wu of Value Penguin analyzed the proposals and concluded that the insurers tried betting on success, and came up short. “What is troubling about the data is that among these insurers, there is clearly an issue with the premiums offered in the first enrollment period,” Wu writes. Noting that the four companies offered the lowest prices in the market this year, their enrollment numbers are not surprising, but their consumers may get a less-pleasant surprise by the end of the year.

- See more at: Big Increases in Obamacare Premiums and Deductibles Coming in November | The Fiscal Times numbers get worse when looking at how many of these enrollees were previously uninsured. Earlier estimates put that number at around a third, but a new study from the McKinsey Center for US Health System Reform pegs the number lower at 26 percent. When filtering out those who have paid their premium, the number drops to 22 percent of the administration’s claimed enrollees, or about 1.7 million people.

Most of the individual-market enrollments were simply churn created by the market disruption of Obamacare itself. Those enrollments barely made a dent in the claimed numbers of the uninsured, estimates of which range between 30-40 million.

Now that insurers have seen the composition of their new risk pools under Obamacare, they have to calculate their new pricing levels for state and federal regulators. The pricing jump for 2014 was more speculative, based on the presumed demographic composition of incoming enrollees. The pricing proposals from Virginia and Washington indicate that the new enrollments made the risk pools riskier than first thought.

Rate-proposal filings in the state of Washington show the four largest insurers proposing average increases across their plans ranging from 8.1 percent to 11.2 percent in a single year. Jonathan Wu of Value Penguin analyzed the proposals and concluded that the insurers tried betting on success, and came up short. “What is troubling about the data is that among these insurers, there is clearly an issue with the premiums offered in the first enrollment period,” Wu writes. Noting that the four companies offered the lowest prices in the market this year, their enrollment numbers are not surprising, but their consumers may get a less-pleasant surprise by the end of the year.

There is more in the article, it is interesting how this thing keeps getting worse and worse.

My mother needs her pacemaker leads change, they wheeled her in to the operating room and got everything ready, then the doctor came in and called off the surgery because the "new" policy my mother has, says it can't be done until 2015.

I have a friend who is a truck driver, he went to the doctor to get his CDL physical. The doctor wants to do a CTScan before giving him the okay. The issue is, he had a CTScan in October and his knew policy allows only one per year. So, he needs to shell out $4000 to get a CTScan. So, he can no longer work, and is now unemployed.

Coverage worse, costs going up. More people not covered, the economic impact will not hit until 2015 when the employer mandate goes into effect and that will hurt us, otherwise Obama would not have delayed it until after the midterm elections.

 

[MaxGrit]

Please use CT instead of CTScan when you are talking about X-ray computed tomography. It improves time efficiency, thus lowering Obamacare premiums. Thank you.

Then again, government efficiency is an oxymoron.

All insurance companies are heavily taxed due to the Affordable Care Act. The health insurance tax, one of the most significant assessments included in the health care law, charges each insurance company based on the number of insurance plans sold — and is expected to collect $8 billion this year and grow to $14.3 billion by 2018.

Obamacare’s insurer tax will likely be passed onto customers in the form of higher premiums, however. The health insurance tax alone is expected to raise premiums by $101 on average this year alone, according to a March study from the free-market think tank American Action Forum.

Seven taxes initiated by the health care law will hike premiums for exchange customers by $354 in 2014, according to AAF, and by $196 for those with employer-sponsored health insurance.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/07/d...-to-pay-for-obamacare-exchange/#ixzz32C86wzVa

 

[MaxGrit]

On Jan 1. 2014 top income tax went from 35% to 39.6%
Income tax went from 37.4% to 52.2%
Capital gains tax went from 15% to 28%
dividend tax went from 15% to 39.6%
Estate tax went from 0 to 55%

There is now a federal real estate tax and hidden in the still being written Obamacare act. Literally dozens and dozens of additional taxes from tanning salons to medical appliances and more. All thanks to the democrat party.

This was behind the curtain in the Obamacare Act without a single republican vote!

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

On Jan 1. 2014 top income tax went from 35% to 39.6%
Income tax went from 37.4% to 52.2%
Capital gains tax went from 15% to 28%
dividend tax went from 15% to 39.6%
Estate tax went from 0 to 55%

There is now a federal real estate tax and hidden in the still being written Obamacare act. Literally dozens and dozens of additional taxes from tanning salons to medical appliances and more. All thanks to the democrat party.

This was behind the curtain in the Obamacare Act without a single republican vote!

Capital gains tax went from 15% to 28%
Thus assuring I wont cash in and spend any of the money until we get a conservative in office.
I waited for the Bush capital gains cuts before,I can do it again.
Way to stimulate the economy obammy!

 

[william the wie]

I don't want to sound dismissive but a list of the dysfunctional parts of this bill is nearly incomprehensible and if a final count is ever possible, which I doubt, it is unlikely that the problems mentioned in the OP will even make the top one hundred. It is even remotely possible that it will not make the top thousand.

Megan McArdle, a columnist for Bloomberg has a very long list of columns dealing with Obamacare and Vermont's attempt to go with single payer. McArdle is a supporter of Ocare and can therefore be used to avoid the usual source criticisms of the Obamabots and you can normally get one or two columns per week from her alone.

CNBC, which is the most left liberal of business sites, is another source that supporters of this idiocy will find hard to dismiss.

Ocare is so stupid that it make prohibition seem smart but its cascading failures are slow motion.

 

[Papageorgio]

Liberals keep screaming that the health is better now, does anyone have any examples. I provide two that show it is worse.

 

[william the wie]

Liberals keep screaming that the health is better now, does anyone have any examples. I provide two that show it is worse.

Temporarily Covered California will out-perform the old system due to ultra-narrow networks and reimbursement rates about a penny above marginal cost. Since MDs and other caregivers do not normally use monster.com to get a new practice it will be 3-18 months before that explodes. In the meantime it is the showcase for Obamacare because if you cherry pick the data it looks fabulous. There are probably other Potemkin projects that look good on paper and are designed to last until @ Nov. 10, 2016.

The question is with all of the eggs the Ds are juggling how soon will the breakage start and how bad will it be? Canada for example is debating a pipeline to the East Coast that will bypass Obama's dithering on the Keystone deal, his war on coal will result in those mines becoming natural gas fields and unlike shale fields dynamite or other explosives will create more natural gas pockets in coal fields. I would say the Ds are in big trouble but it will be a drip, drip, drip.