Prices jump for individual insurance premiums

[RDD_1210]

Car accident injuries are often paid by your car insurance. Many people run without car insurance too.

Seriously? That's your response? So what about a stroke, heart attack, aneurysm, fall off the roof of your house, attack by a mountain lion or one of a thousand other things that could happen to you that you can't plan for ahead of time. Seriously, think about this and use some common sense.

 

[Gremlin-USA]

just because you can't be turned down w/an existing condition does not mean they can not charge you more for the policy...does it? like $1000 a month for it?

My Scenario was more a rhetorical comment, but do you see the point?, save 30,000 or more and wait till you need Insurance, so even a 1,000.00 or 2,000.00 payment for that 1st month, get fixed up and drop the Insurance.

That is the premise of how this Bill could backfire.


.

What happens if you get in a bad car accident? Have a heart attack? Something else sudden? Are you going to call and set up insurance on the ambulance ride over to the hospital? Life doesn't always go as you plan it, that's why it's called insurance...you pay for it in case you need it, not when you need it.

Some would say, well my tax dollars pay for Emergency Treatments.

But the main problem is:
How many people in America do not think past tomorrow?
How many people think they are invincible, shoot I never had HC Insurance till I was 30, had nothing to do with affordability.

Look at how many people are 25,000 or more in CC debt, have a house twice as big as they need, two fancy cars and are 2 days ahead of bill collectors. Many people will put off buying HC for too long, but this HC Bill gives them another avenue too wait maybe till like you say, maybe too late.


.

 

[RDD_1210]

My Scenario was more a rhetorical comment, but do you see the point?, save 30,000 or more and wait till you need Insurance, so even a 1,000.00 or 2,000.00 payment for that 1st month, get fixed up and drop the Insurance.

That is the premise of how this Bill could backfire.


.

What happens if you get in a bad car accident? Have a heart attack? Something else sudden? Are you going to call and set up insurance on the ambulance ride over to the hospital? Life doesn't always go as you plan it, that's why it's called insurance...you pay for it in case you need it, not when you need it.

Some would say, well my tax dollars pay for Emergency Treatments.

But the main problem is:
How many people in America do not think past tomorrow?
How many people think they are invincible, shoot I never had HC Insurance till I was 30, had nothing to do with affordability.

Look at how many people are 25,000 or more in CC debt, have a house twice as big as they need, two fancy cars and are 2 days ahead of bill collectors. Many people will put off buying HC for too long, but this HC Bill gives them another avenue too wait maybe till like you say, maybe too late.


.

Our economy is not doing well, right? Scores of people are filing bankruptcy, right?

What do you think the #1 reason for people filing bankruptcy in this country is? .......Unpaid medical bills.
And of those people more then half actually DID have insurance. Something needed to change and this healthcare bill certainly isn't anything close to the magic bullet but it's a step in the right direction.

How many people in America do not think past tomorrow?

You're right, many people don't think past tomorrow, that's why required insurance IS necessary.

How many people think they are invincible, shoot I never had HC Insurance till I was 30, had nothing to do with affordability.

Again, a lot of people do think this way, doesn't mean its smart. When I was 27, I was making decent money and had EXCELLENT insurance. My fiancee was on my plan and got sick with leukemia. She was able to get most of the treatments she needed because she had insurance (even though we had to fight for many of her procedures to be covered). Even though we had some of the best coverage you could get, I still had a bill for $187,000 that was not covered. How could this be possible for someone with insurance? I'll tell you this, it takes a lot less then $187,000 to bankrupt most people in this country. The system was/is broken and something had to change.

 

[Greenbeard]

Greenbeard, he's here from the government to help you.

That's right, I'm a clandestine government agent, part of a secret cabal that killed Kennedy, faked the moon landing, and corrects your misinformation on health care reform.

Or perhaps I'm just a guy who tries to stay informed on health policy.

I have a question in Scenario Form.

Say that I do not have HC coverage and in 2014 my fine is 95.00, I continue on to 2015 and my fine is 325.00, carry on to 2016 and my fine is 695.00, realize now I have been saving the 350.00 per month (or higher as the years go on) Insurance payment for 7 years or 29,400.00 (actually more with costs going up)

Then in July of 2017, I get sick and sign up for HC Insurance for say 400.00 for that month. Now with the new BO plan I cannot be turned down for pre-existing conditions.

I just cannot see how this plan can do anything but drive HC Insurance Costs thru the roof or cost taxpayers Billions if very many people did the same Scenario.

Please explain

First of all, there are dangers that the mandate won't be large enough to fulfill its function of replacing medical underwriting. Uwe Reinhardt had a piece ("Pitfalls of the Health Mandate") on that possibility in the NYT the other day.

However, note that in your scenario you can't necessarily just sign up in July. The legislation provides for annual open enrollment periods:

(6) ENROLLMENT PERIODS- The Secretary shall require an Exchange to provide for--

(A) an initial open enrollment, as determined by the Secretary (such determination to be made not later than July 1, 2012);
(B ) annual open enrollment periods, as determined by the Secretary for calendar years after the initial enrollment period;
(C ) special enrollment periods specified in section 9801 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and other special enrollment periods under circumstances similar to such periods under part D of title XVIII of the Social Security Act; and
(D) special monthly enrollment periods for Indians (as defined in section 4 of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act).​

So if your state's exchange was on a schedule similar to the FEHBP, you'd have to wait until November to sign up for a plan. If your illness is urgent (or, as someone pointed out above, it's not an illness per se but more a sudden catastrophic medical event like a heart attack or injuries sustained in any kind of accident), you're out of luck. So even with guaranteed issue, there's still risk associated with going without insurance.

The penalty levels associated with the individual mandate were weakened several times as the bills bounced through Congress. But we can look at the existing health insurance mandate to get a sense of whether the mandate level is hopelessly inadequate. Massachusetts uses a tiered system for its mandate. Here's what the penalties were last year:

1. Income under 150% of poverty (FPL) – no penalty.
2. Income between 150-200% FPL – $17 per month/$204 per year
3. Income between 201-250% FPL – $35 per month/$420 per year
4. Income between 251-300% FPL — $52 per month/$624 per year
5. Income above 300% FPL and Age 18-26: $52 per month/$624 per year
6. Income above 300% FPL and Age 27+: $89 per month/$1,068 per year

You'll notice that the Massachusetts numbers are actually lower than the federal penalty for all but the highest tier. The highest tier would be paying 2.5% of income under the federal law, so the federal penalty only becomes higher than the Massachusetts penalty for an individual making around $43,000 or more. The result has been an uninsurance rate in Massachusetts that's remained at less than 5% even during the deepest recession in decades. Of course, we're comparing Massachusetts's rates from last year with rates that everyone will be charged five and a half years from now but still, the numbers from the one mandate currently in effect aren't particularly discouraging for the future federal mandate.

Not much to explain. Insurance is and has always been about protecting you from an unforeseen risk. If you do away with the incentive to pay monthly premiums while your well, it defeats the very fabric of insurance.

Are you in favor of increasing the mandate penalty?

Some would say, well my tax dollars pay for Emergency Treatments.

Actually, DSH payments to hospitals to cover some of the costs of dealing with the uninsured will be scaled back as part of this law since presumably they'll be much less necessary in a few years.

 

[rightwinger]

Makes you wish we had a public option doesn't it?

 

[RDD_1210]

I noticed they don't have any response. Maybe they realize the gaping hole in their ridiculous argument and aren't man enough to admit that maybe, just maybe they could possibly be wrong.

 

[The Rabbi]

each state controls these insurance hikes...

our attorney general last year stopped wellpoint from raising premiums by 20%....now wellpoint is suing my state

What happens when it is no longer profitable to write health insurance in your state?

 

[Cuyo]

Does somebody have to draw you a map in order to understand why? Obamacare is going to be expensive. Fewer people will be able to afford coverage.

The OP has nothing to do with the reform law.

This needs a bump... The OP has _NOTHING_ to do with HCR.

What you guys are doing is akin to the weatherman saying "It's going to rain tomorrow" and then me saying "Give me 20 bucks and I'll make it rain tomorrow." You give me 20 bucks, it rains, I say "See, I told ya."

 

[auditor0007]

77 percent of those who buy their own coverage have had cost increases

Wellpoint — a big health insurer sharply criticized by the Obama Administration for seeking to raise rates up to 39 percent for some California policyholders earlier this year — was not unusual in seeking double-digit increases, a new survey finds.

People who buy their own health insurance report the most recent rate increase requests have averaged 20 percent, according to the survey released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is a part of the foundation.)

Prices jump for individual insurance premiums - Health care- msnbc.com

© 2010 This information was reprinted with permission from KHN. KHN is an editorially independent news service and a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy organization that isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Between 2003 to 2008, I had private health insurance coverage, and this was before Obamacare. Annual premium increases averaged about 18% per year during that time period. Because I moved out of state, I lost my insurance due to pre-existing conditions. However, those rate increases would have continued, and did for anyone with a policy, during 2009 and 2010.

But now, all of a sudden, the rate increases are due to Obamacare? What was the cause of the double digit rate increases for the past seven to ten years before Obamacare? Are you saying that without Obamacare, we would not have seen any rate increases?

While Obamacare looks like a big mess, and probably will be, the fact is that rates would have continued to increase by double digits even without Obamacare. All I know is that now I will at least be able to purchase insurance again. As for reducing costs, Obamacare certainly is not the driving force as these increases have been with us for the last decade before Obamacare, and there certainly was no end in sight.

If we want to figure out how to reduce costs, then we need to look at what is driving the costs, and there is not one single answer. But what I know personally is that I can pay cash for my treatments and medical care, and it costs me 25% of what the insurance companies were paying out when I was insured. This, to me, is just plain stupid. Why are insurance companies paying certain providers ridiculous amounts of money for certain procedures when they can be done for 1/4 the price elsewhere? If provider B can provide medical treatment for $5000, why are the insurance companies paying provider A $20,000 for the same exact care? Answer that, and just maybe we will start finding some real answers.