Wait, I thought this was supposed to make things more affordable? And I thought I could keep my doctor? Wait, I thought we could trust the government to run things effeciently and effectively? - Said no sane person, ever.....

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/04/21/Get-Ready-Huge-Obamacare-Premium-Hikes-2017

 

If the two main factors for the increase are...

This: A general rise in the nation's health care tab. Overall, U.S. health care spending grew by 5.3 percent in 2014 - reaching an historic level of $3 trillion, after years of relative cost stability. Medical costs rise from year to year and will certainly affect the next round of premium hikes.

And this: Soaring prescription drug prices. Insurers as well as government health care programs have been struggling to keep pace with rising drug prices, especially newer specialty drugs to treat the Hepatitis-C virus and cancer. Pfizer Inc., Amgen Inc., Allergan PLC and other companies have raised U.S. prices for scores of branded drugs since late December, with many of the increases between 9 percent and 10 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal.

How is it the fault of Obamacare?


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I was right.

Is it a question where you get what you pay for?

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

Not saying Obanacare is a fault, just pointing out the fact that The Affordable Healthcare is failing miserably at making things affordable. Well, at least for those of us that work for our money.

It is to some degree a matter of getting what you pay for, but I am getting less, even though we're paying for other people and more procedures.

It's also a function of supply and demand. Demand increasing both as people get older, and also as they capitalize to get service/care back that they're paying for.

Demand is increasing, as is the supply of money, via the government subsidies being pumped in. The market is a sponge that will absorb all money thrown at it.

As for me, my yearly premium is now equal to my mortgage, and my family deductible is another year's worth of mortgage payments.

It's like I'm paying three mortgages instead of one, as the family has met our deductible (barely) in each of the last two tax years. In other words, I'm still paying for everything. If I had not paid almost $12K into insurance, I could have paid that toward the medical care instead, and come out about $12K ahead.

I don't feel like i'm getting my money's worth out of income tax either.

Yes, I'm mad, Bro. (Because I knew bob3000 would ask, )

No it's not. It is because the participants are older and sicker than what was anticipated, while the young, healthy people aren't signing up in the numbers expected. Hence, higher premiums.

It is utterly ridiculous to even pretend that Clown Care isn't a huge flop. It is yet another failure to add to the PiC's abysmal legacy.

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I :heart; Q

nah, I wasn't gonna Joe. You (mostly seem to) have a reasonable mind. Its some other of these characters that need.... enlightenment.

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Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean

Ergo, the perpetuation of the private insurance industry is a flop. Thanks Obama for conducting the experiment which confirms our suspicions. Bring on the efficiency of single payer and payroll tax funding.

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“It is the heart of US policy to use fascism to preserve capitalism while claiming to be saving democracy from communism “ - Michael Parenti

Well Rusty, when you move it all to a government single-payer, you will still have the same number of sick people (if not more) racking up big bills, which will only be paid for if you force more young people to sign up.

Rusty, my man, the dems are the ones who incorporated the insurance companies into the program. They did that to get them on board. Nothing would have passed had they and various other bribed groups (e.g., AARP) not been behind it. The dems had to resort to tricks to get it passed as it was. In any event it was the gov't and the gov't only who laid this egg.

Thus, the prog position, as I understand it, is that since the gov't screwed up so bad with Clown Care, only the gov't can create a working system. That about right? With that efficiency that gov'ts are renown for?

Obviously, single payer would be an even bigger disaster. None of those idiots know the first thing about health care. The insurance and medical industries do. I'll trust them. It is quaint that you trust the gov't, but we would get the usual gov't results.

 

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I :heart; Q

You're not 100% wrong Pablo, we did use the Heritage Foundation healthcare plan because we couldn't pass anything without the special interests on-board. Incidentally that's where the hated individual mandate came from.
Call it a trick, I call it political expediency.

I submit that the government hasn't screwed up at all, they demonstrated the weakness of the conservative plan by implementing it. FWIW given the right leadership the government CAN be efficient, but that's another discussion.
In current form, I don't trust them either.

Here's where it gets interesting. We the people, through our democratic representatives say to the insurance industry "game over". BUT, we want to hire a contractor to administer our single payer system. We're going to have oversight and audit, answerable to the people, and you're going to run the infrastructure (mostly existing but redundant and therefore costly). In a hybrid sense you'll still have your "insurance company", they will just administer the government plan on a cost plus basis. Easy, peazy, lemon squeezy.

Other remnants of the private insurance industry can pick up some crumbs selling Cadillac coverage that gets rich folks a private room and caviar from a depraved private Ukrainian nurse. In fact I'd like to be an HR recruiter for that aspect of the business, but I digress.

I solved the healthcare problem, you're welcome.


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“It is the heart of US policy to use fascism to preserve capitalism while claiming to be saving democracy from communism “ - Michael Parenti

A government-run, mandatory-participation insurance program is a bad idea.

A government-run, optional-participation plan is fine, as long as those who elect to not use it do not have to pay into it.

Basically a true "public OPTION" would provide real competition to the private market.

But you can't talk in absolutes. You have to decide what's really going to be covered and denied, whether there will be lifetime benefit limits or not, how much care will be rationed by specialists, who (doctors and hospitals) will accept the government's plan and reimbursement rates, how much deductibles will be, etc...

If you just eliminating the $7K/person deductibles in a "single-payer" system, all those base costs people have been absorbing themselves will become a burden to the government system, requiring further tax funding by other citizens.

And if people have avoided going to the doc because of the deductible, you can bet your ass they'll be visiting in droves once it's all "free."

The government pays for the infirm so the rest don't have to foot their bill.

Once the cost creators are removed from the equation, the prices will fall.

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I was right.

A couple of points. Preventative care and early intervention are cheaper than treating full blow disease. Everyone must be insured. To go uninsured is to shift the burden of your care to the public. Young people like to think they don't need it because they are healthy, but they have a tendency toward expensive injuries. Think motorcycle.

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“It is the heart of US policy to use fascism to preserve capitalism while claiming to be saving democracy from communism “ - Michael Parenti

The current system with its high deductibles discourages preventative care visits.

Removing the deductibles will get a lot more people using care of all kinds, and that's fine, but it comes with a cost too.

Yes, young people have expensive injuries, but they are more rare than old folks' expensive illnesses. The lack of young (mostly healthy) people participating is one reason insurers in the current system are suffering: They need people who pay more than they use, and the young healthies are that group.

You left a lot of points unaddressed, but I assume your belief in mandatory participation funded by payroll taxation stands, and I could not disagree more with that.

With increased access and demand come increased delivery costs. A large number of the private providers will not go along with the reduced reimbursement rates that are necessary to balance the equation. The increase in cost of care delivered will far exceed the current costs of overhead in a private system.

Unless you hired a giant army of government doctors, or orchestrated some government takeover of the private medical industry, you wouldn't really be able to control costs in any significant manner.

http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-preventive-care/

"ObamaCare includes preventive care at no out-of-pocket cost on most health plans. ObamaCare's free preventive services help to put the focus on wellness, early detection, and prevention, instead of treatments and cures.

FACT: At least 15 free preventive services and one wellness visit are covered on Major Medical Plans sold after 2014 without copays and coinsurance, regardless of whether you have met your deductible yet. Services must be done in-network to avoid cost sharing."

Economies of scale lower costs, not increase them. It's being done with great success in every developed country except the USA.

I don't know why Americans accept the false narrative on healthcare, maybe we generally just don't know about the outside world.

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“It is the heart of US policy to use fascism to preserve capitalism while claiming to be saving democracy from communism “ - Michael Parenti

Single payer automatically forces everyone into the pot if it is paid through the general revenue and concomittant tax increases.

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This all results from tax laws dating to the 1950s that encouraged big employers to provide health care as a pre-tax benefit. Milton Friedman wrote an excellent essay on the topic 50 years ago and everything he predicted has come to pass.

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Insurance should not be paying for basic and preventive care, period. That it does is the problem with or without deductibles.

Health insurance, if we are going to go to a free market model and minimize costs, should work like property insurance and actually function as insurance and not pre-paid health care. We should be paying for all the basics direct to the provider.

People should be buying insurance priced according to their risk. If they go buy preventive health care then perhaps they can negotiate lower premiums but the insurance company doesn't buy the preventive and regular care. An analogy would be that the insurance company didn't buy my impact windows but it gives me a discount on my property disaster insurance because I'd bought reinforced doors and windows.

How do you propose to force young healthy people to come in and subsidize the old and the sick if getting young healthy people to buy in is the answer to reducing prices for everybody else?

Of course for the free market approach to health care to work you have to be willing to let people die when they do not carry insurance and something bad happens. You can't let people go their whole lives uninsured and then bail them out when the shit hits the fan.

People that favor the employer provided model that is pre-Obamacare and that has been reinforced by Obamacare need to ask themselves some questions.

Your employer pays you a wage with which you go buy as you need/want housing, transporation, etc... You then use your wages to maintain your car(s) house(s) and buy private insurance to cover those things.

How has is come to pass that you expect your employer to pay for all of your health care through "insurance"? What effect does that have on the health care market? Why is the premium the same for your health family of 3 the same as the premium for the obese family of 5?

Your property insurance is priced to the value, quality, and location of your house. But your work provide health insurance costs you the same as the really expensive family. If there is some magic cost savings to the group insurance then why doesn't your employer just provide you all with housing and property insurance according to your needs?

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Edited: 04/29/2016 at 06:27 AM by scombrid

scombrid, , , , , Noooooooooooooo! You just can't say such things here, , , , ,!!!!! LOL

Health "Insurance" IS PRE-PAID care!

Now, back to the original premiss of this thread, , , , ,; regardless of your political "leanings" the costs of the current ACA are going to go UP, and dramatically in some cases. Yep, it may still be considered to be "pre-paid", but get prepared to pay actual, full, cost!

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Dora Hates You