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

[Lainey]

The biggest expense for our company plan are all related to obesity, mainly knee & hip problems, and our workforce is relatively young, mostly 30's and early 40's. In order to save money, we invest quite a bit into wellness incentives, healthy eating, on-site exercise facility, cash payouts for involvement in regular exercise activities, on-site food subsidies in our cafeteria, etc. Our insurance provider gives us credits for all those things, but I'm not convinced they've helped much.

Our company is pursuing the wellness activities too. But I'm not ready to say the hip/knee replacements are mainly due to obesity. Again, anecdotally, the people in my extended circle really vary: maybe 2 due to obesity; a few due to accidents including falling off a roof, a motorcycle accident, and a car accident; the rest are due to participating in extreme sports after the age of 50. I mean doing things like marathons and parasailing in your 60s+.
All of that is fine, but again, in our parents or grandparents time, people in that age group weren't generally doing the risky type of sports, and if they did break a bone, they could expect to be using a cane, not getting replacement medical devices in expensive surgeries.

Finally, I'm not sure doctors would even do knee replacements for obese patients. A friend's mother was told she would have to lose 100 lbs before the doctor would operate. She did so, and only then did she have the surgery.

[Spartana]

But I'm not ready to say the hip/knee replacements are mainly due to obesity. Again, anecdotally, the people in my extended circle really vary: maybe 2 due to obesity; a few due to accidents including falling off a roof, a motorcycle accident, and a car accident; the rest are due to participating in extreme sports after the age of 50. I mean doing things like marathons and parasailing in your 60s+.
.

This is my experience too. Younger, healthy, fit people (including myself) that I know seem to have many more sports related injuries requirering expensive surguries and long rehabs then the older people (say in their 60's and above). Many older people don't suffer chronic illnesses until they are much older and often retired so probably doesn't effect an employers insurance coverage too much. Or they can be more easily forced into retirement due to illness when they are older. The only medical care I have ever needed was when I hurt myself badly on a motorcycle in my teens and then in my early 40's from a volleyball injury. That surgury and year long rehab was extremely expensive and covered mostly by my COBRA insurance I still carried from my previous employee. Oh yeah, and I was injured while in the military but dear Uncle Sam paid for that :-)!

[jennipurrr]

I read an interesting article a year or so back about smokers and obese people...that they die so much earlier and of fairly quickly life ending diseases, that they rarely have all the drawn out health care costs of aging, assisted living, etc. The study was not from the US but I did think it was an interesting perspective, counter to what the general prevailing thought is on the topic.

Now, my employer is gung ho on the wellness/anti-smoking stuff as smokers and obese folks cost them much more health care wise month to month. I guess if the cost savings of early death are actually true, it is probably saving Medicare rather than employer insurance.

My insurance cost is staying the same I believe. Irislillies, I also wondered if the raises this year were amounts employers would normally eat some of to prevent employee backlash, but now have "obamacare" to blame it on, so they took advantage of the opportunity to charge it all to the employees.

[mm1970]

I've been paying $110 a paycheck (twice a month) for the past year or so. Single, no dependents, PPO. HR gave us some estimates today, and it looks like I'm going to be paying $175 every paycheck. This is the biggest jump we've ever had. In the past, the increase has been no more than $20/paycheck.

I'm not sure - we haven't had our renewal yet. My husband's has gone down!

[Rogar]

MMM's most recent blog article is called "Obamacare, Friend of the Entrepreneur and Early Retiree" which I found interesting.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/author/eminem/

[try2bfrugal]

I just got the letter our current policy is being cancelled. Their suggested replacement policy is $800 per month cheaper. We will actually do better than that on the exchanges because we can get subsidies next year.

[Simpler at Fifty]

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stor...insurance.aspx

I read this information last week. It is also referenced in the MMM article Rogar has in his post.

[bae]

I just got the letter our current policy is being cancelled.

[try2bfrugal]

Bae, I'm being offered a better policy for $800 less a month, and that is without any subsidies. I don't know what our income will be next year between being self employed and maybe doing some 401K draw downs, but with insurance from the exchanges our premiums will be from $4 to maybe a couple hundred a month.

I'm going to save $25K in premiums alone in 2014.

[bae]

That may be, but you are not able to keep your current one :-)