So how much is your insurance going up due to Obamacare?

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Originally Posted by kib

Even as one in favor of a more communal outlook, I can't find much to like about ACA.

I keep likening our public policy to a very stupid person's approach to their life circumstances: if you have an $8000 electric bill each month and half a brain, the first thing you do is not to take a second job to pay the bill, OR ask your neighbor to pay some of it for you. You look at the bill and see why on earth it's so high. You turn out lights and put on a sweater. In fact maybe you even go down to the electric company with a cattle prod.

The question of "how shall the country pay its healthcare bill" should be absolutely secondary to, "where on earth did this bill amount come from, are they nuts?"


ETA: I'm not suggesting that each of us can take on the task of analyzing our health care / health insurance costs on our own, but that if our administration is actually for the people, that should be the first order of business, not paying some insane fee and then casually asking why when the money's already gone.

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Everyone who has a medical treatment knows why things costs so much--because the patient takes no active role in consuming the service, there is a disconnect between the service and paying the bill. Patients don't have enough skin in the game to work toward reducing costs. That's is a mistake and we all need to take more responsibility in non-emergency situations and just say "no."

The last medical treatment I had was for a dog bite on my knuckle. I probably could have got by with no treatment at all, but DH urged me to go get stitches, so I did. As it turns out, the bite never became infected.

But the urgent care doc who sewed me up then sent me to the hand doctor in the same building. That was completely unnecessary and I should have said "no, unnecessary" but the hand doctor has got to get his cut for this small event. He told me that I didn't need to come back a second time, he wanted to save me the $50 co pay. That's nice of him but $50 is nothing, what was the insurance company paying him? I don't even know, and that is wrong.

Our medical event before this was when DH fainted--twice--at a party. We were surrounded by medical professionals who urged him to go to the hospital. 24 hours later and god knows how many thousands of dollars later, he was fine, tests revealed not one bloody thing wrong with him. Two years after this event later he is completely fine and nothing has ever come of that.

Ugh, it's all a racquet.

I don't believe I'd be in any position to negotiate or say no if they were prescribing chemo or something and I wouldn't. And even the end of life stuff is being paid for mostly by Medicare rather than insurance. So there's really very little excuse for pre-Medicare healthcare being the ripoff it is. As for the scam that is much of modern pharma, maybe they should just reduce demand by banning t.v. advertising haha. Leave the doctors and patients free to seek what they want as far as prescriptions (whether insurance covers ah well that's another can of worms), but no direct to consumer advertising.

To make consumers more responsible for paying for their own healthcare is actually one of the GOALS of Obamacare, whether or not they state it that way. They tell the lies they think we want to hear, but it's definitely in the economic structure that is emerging. It's a very conservative plan in many ways (it's trying to force a marketbased solution). It's why many of the plans on the exchanges are high deductible which is only bad if you 1) dont' have the deductible in cash savings - if you don't then why the heck are you going for a high deductible plan you can't use anyway? maybe because it's the only one you can afford and you have to get insurance :\ 2) need years of expensive medical treatment which will wipe out most people's savings. These plans are going for premiums that are really too high for barely cover anything plans ... they're fairly high deductible plans with non high-deductible premiums.

Another way that Obamacare will make consumers more responsible for paying for their own healthcare is that employers will continue to drop healthcare (especially those "Cadillac" plans which if healthcare inflation continues is pretty much going to be all the PPOs, but employers will also continue to drop even the non-"Cadillac"). So hooray they'll no longer be an employer middleman, we'll all be liberated from our health insurance! (which mostly reminds me of the joke about Iraqis being liberated from their lives - although I really don't regard it as at all comparable in scale - that was genocide afterall, this is just crummy insurance policies). So consumers will be left to buy their own health insurance. But if employers have minimal bargaining power with insurance companies, what kind of bargaining power will consumers have? Competition in the oligopoly world of health insurance will solve everything? The consumers will be cost sensitive but this may lead more to penny wise and pound foolish than actual good decision making (ie go with the cheapo plan with cheap premiums and go bankrupt should you have medical emergency).

Maybe one of the major objectives of Obamacare is to get the cost of healthcare off employers. Because employers in the U.S. have trouble competing with all those countries where employers don't have to pay for healthcare. They solve it by socialized medicine. We'll solve it by everyone having to buy their own expensive HMO insurance policies that pay for very little until you reach some high deductible and that still leave you open to medical bankruptcy should you wind up in the hospital and see an out of network specialist. They'll sell fear more than actual product (one might say they already do, but at least the few decent plans remaining actually cover some routine things and provide *some* protection). As less and less is covered they'll be selling pure protection from fear itself with a mandate.

Ha. At the eleventh hour, after *many* frustrating days/hours on the web site and the phone, my wife finally managed to get us signed up for "something".

The nice lady on the other end of the phone didn't know *exactly* what "something" was, what was covered, what deductibles or co-pays were, or if our local doctors would take "something" (or if we'd have to travel an entire day and spend $100+ to see a non-local doctor), but heck, progress, right?

And the good news is, it appears "something" will be completely free, courtesy of Alan, so thanks there, Big Guy! Mind you, we have no clue what we are getting for "free". I wonder if it is as good as the plan we had selected of our own free will and bought with our own hard-earned dollars, which our government informs us we are too child-like to select on our own, and arranged to be cancelled for us?

So, if January 1st I get hit by a bus, heck, "something" will be covered by "someone" "somewhere".

I guess I'll have to use it to see what's in it....

My insurance is increasing by $4 a month and a 3-month supply of a generic drug prescription is going up from $10 to $12. We are also getting a new vision plan. It doesn't look like much else has changed.

The latest plan I am considering is a Blue Cross bronze level plan that is $464/month with a $6000 annual deductible, a 20% co-insurance and $60 co-pay for doctors visits (I forget how much meds co-pay is but ER and hospital co-pays are $250). That's approx. $300/month more for premiums than my previous catastrophic plan was and I had a lower deducible of $4000 and I had no co-insurance costs before. But it's the lowest price plan I could find that has a reasonable co-insurance amount. A lower (the lowest I could find) plan wouldn't cost that much less (around $410/month with a $5,500 deductible) but it has a 40% annual co-insurance and higher co-payments. I don't qualify for subsidies so I'd be paying for the full premium - which is about 1/3rd of my monthly income. Guess I'll have to go off retirement and get one of those job-thingies :-)! Nah...will just dip into the rainy-day fund! Of course I am still contemplating just using the VA for all my medical care (very little needed fortunately). It's low cost to me and Alan will just pick up the rest. Thanks Alan :-)!

Alan, for the ~$15k/year you are paying for me, if you are ever in the area, I'll cook you a nice dinner, maybe take you out on the yacht to see some whales, get some fishing in. You let me know, Patrón! I mean, that's a good chunk of The Offspring's Oxford tuition. I owe ya!

Something I am noticing is that the costs of the plans available are not uniform across all 50 states, and here in Arizona one can get a Platinum plan in Maricopa County - i.e, the Phoenix metro area, for around $330/month with HealthNet. I am noticing this is cheaper than in many other states. The plan that Spartana refers to above sounds much more expensive and less patient friendly than what is on offer in Maricopa County, Arizona. This is one area in which I don't have much expertise in health care - I don't understand the rationale for some areas being so much cheaper for premiums and some areas being so much higher. Rob

It looks like the "plan" they may be offering me, Rob, requires me to travel an entire day to see a doctor, and spend $70 or so on travel to do so. Such a win over the "bad" plan they told me I couldn't have.

Still though, with the savings, I may be able to buy a plane to fly over there. Gotta crunch some numbers.

First World Problems.

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Originally Posted by gimmethesimplelife

Something I am noticing is that the costs of the plans available are not uniform across all 50 states, and here in Arizona one can get a Platinum plan in Maricopa County - i.e, the Phoenix metro area, for around $330/month with HealthNet. I am noticing this is cheaper than in many other states. The plan that Spartana refers to above sounds much more expensive and less patient friendly than what is on offer in Maricopa County, Arizona. This is one area in which I don't have much expertise in health care - I don't understand the rationale for some areas being so much cheaper for premiums and some areas being so much higher. Rob

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I think they are age related - us "old" folks must pay more then you young uns (I think you said you were 40). Plug in the numbers in AZ for someone older 45 - 65 and the rates will likely be higher.

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Originally Posted by Spartana

I think they are age related - us "old" folks must pay more then you young uns. Plug in the numbers in AZ for someone 50 - 65 and the rates will likely be higher.

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Spartana, thanks for replying. I will go to healthcare.gov and plug in the numbers for 50 years of age in Maricopa County AZ and see what turns up. Rob