Well yeah, this is what happens when you actively try to sabotage the marketplace. Instead of fixing what’s broken let’s just screw everyone over and see what happens.
Got our new 2018 policy enrolled with no issues on healthcare.gov this morning, our previous insurer (Blue Cross) left the ATL so now we’re on Ambetter. They were the only one left that had our local doctors and hospitals in-network. Other choice (which we’re lucky to have) is Kaiser and you have to switch everything to them. We may end up with them after next year if/when Ambetter pulls out too.
Trump’s action (or if you prefer the poor drafting of the law, or the Congress who declined to authorize the necessary appropriation to pay the CSRs legally) accounts for about 15-20% of the 35-40% premium hikes we’re seeing for 2018 (so 1/3 to 1/2). The trend towards fewer insurers and rapidly rising premiums has been going on for the whole time Obamacare has existed, and it’s just accelerating now that the artificial taxpayer subsidies like the risk corridors have expired and we can see the true cost of things.
Chatter about removing the “individual mandate”, ie the part of Obamacare that taxes you if you don’t buy insurance, in the tax reform bill discussion going on in Washington. The Republicans are trying to pass something without any Democratic support, in which case they need it to appear, for political accounting purposes, to be budget revenue neutral. This is where the mandate comes in favorably:
Part of the repeal’s allure is that it could reduce the federal deficit by about $400 billion, according to a calculation from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That is because many individuals who get insurance because of the mandate also get government subsidies, and if the mandate were repealed and those people didn’t obtain coverage, the government would no longer be paying for their subsidies. It would also reduce the number of people on Medicaid.
Which is yet another attempt to gut the ACA without meaningful reform. Removing the mandate means all the healthy people bail which inevitably leads to death spiral. And then you say ‘Look, we told you it was bad! We win!’.
Guess that estimate doesn’t include the massive premium increases (and even more subsidies paid out) when the insurers factor in that only sick people will get ACA insurance going forward if this passes.
You’re not looking forward to the day when your subsidized insurance premiums are $250/month at an income of $X, but at an income of $(X+1) your unsubsidized premiums for the same policy are $2000/month?
There is a big change happening in healthcare, specifically in the drug sector. Many people are unaware of it, but it’s having a profound impact on the industry.
Drug prices are falling across the board. Generic prices are practically collapsing. It’s due mainly to recent FDA reforms. Competing drugs are being approved faster.
Hopefully, more competition can be brought to other areas of healthcare soon. Medical device makers, hospitals, insurers, and doctors need to be exposed to real competition.
As I understand it, the subsidies for people on ACA are based on the cost of the Silver plan. With the elimination of the CSR, the cost of the Silver plan has increased and thus the subsidies have increased. Those on ACA who are not on a Silver plan might pay less this year than last. I believe all others will pay more.
Correct, if you are getting Silvers you won’t see much diff in premiums because subsidies rise to cover the second lowest-cost plan. The folks that get shafted by CSR subsidies going away are the ones not getting subsidies because they’re just over the income cliff (same folks that hated the ACA in the first place for that reason).
Ours went from $36/mo. for BCBS last year to $68/mo. for Ambetter next year, with lower max OOP cost. This is a 94% CSR’d plan.
Question. For a provider that’s out of network for ACA (blue cross) but would otherwise accept normal blue cross (BCBS), do you still get the benefit of usual and customary pricing? Or are you at the whims of the providers cash pricing? Will I need to negotiate in advance every single time?
Some WSJ commentary on the “individual mandate” (i.e. tax penalty for not buying into Obamacare). Sounds like this may yet be on the chopping block as a budget boosting point in the tax reform negotiations.
If you were deliberately trying to design the most arbitrary, painful and pointless tax possible, how would you go about it? First, you would structure it to inflate the cost of an essential product. Then, you’d create exemptions so vast that only 5% of taxpayers were subject to it. You might even ensure that it hit people only when they were particularly vulnerable—like when they’d lost a job. Finally, you would use it to drive enrollment in entitlements, so that it increased the federal deficit by $338 billion. In short, you would design something that looks very much like the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
Note that the mandate is a tax on the poor. More than one in three households that paid the “individual shared responsibility payment” in 2015 earned less than $25,000 and more than 90% made less than $75,000, according to IRS data. For instance: More than 34,000 families in Maine paid $15 million to the government for the high privilege of not buying ObamaCare. Repeal would be tax relief for low-income families.
Yeah its sad but I don’t find it surprising. Given the amount of ignorance, misinformation, stupidity, etc it follows that a lot of people wouldn’t understand the penalty, how their taxes work, how ACA subsidies work, etc and think they either don’t need to pay the penalty that ACA would be too expensive or just blindly think ACA is bad.
There are still self-reliant people who will refuse welfare payments even if they are eligible. It doesn’t make them dumb. In fact we should have more respect for those daring people. It’s a slippery slope that can lead to serfdom once someone starts accepting freebies from the government – instead of earning through hard work.