just out of curiosity, how many here would jump at the chance to have healthcare for the following price,
HRA:
Per Paycheck: $769.99 bi-weekly
Yearly cost: $9,239.88
PPO:
Per Paycheck: $850.01 bi-weekly
Yearly cost: $10,200.06
Copays: $50 for Office, $100 for Emergency, $20 for Generic Prescription $35 for Name Brand Prescription
Deductible: 12,500 (Max out of pocket per year) $6,000 per incident per person.
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The above is the insurance being offered to me by my employer for a family of 3. No subsidies, and the employer was still paying their portion. Welcome to California rates (Big Blue Liberal State, opting in and getting screwed) ... and I hear place like Wyoming are even worse off.
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funny I had no problem, paying for heath insurance before the ACA, and then prices tripled, and put me out of the affordability range. Sort of feels like people being told they can come into my home and take the food off my table, now i do not mind sharing, but not to the point I have nothing left to eat.
Ah, yes it's the evil insurance companies taking advantage of the ACA. Sort of like letting a fox lose in a chicken coup and then blaming the fox for killing the chickens. Although everyone said "hey that fox is going to kill your chickens", lets just claim unintended consequences, and say the fox is evil for doing what it is known to do.
I did my homework when it comes to the ACA, because getting screwed over like this, I just needed to know, if this was just a one off, or something fundamentally wrong with the law. It can be shown thru data, that the ACA at a national level doubled the cost of insurance in less than 6 years. The normal rate for insurance doubling prior to the ACA, took 17 years to double. In 1991 the price was $175 per month in 2007 the price was $366 per month in 2006 it was $344. The ACA and "evil" insurance companies managed to take insurance prices in 2009 which were $383 per month to a staggering $774 per month by 2014. These number are at a national level as calculated by eHealthinsurance.com, the BLS.gov, and the HHS.gov websites.
Before trying to use the "but you cannot be charged more than 10% of your income", with me i would point you to the Congressional Reporting Service's data clearly showing that a 60 year old who happens to be just above the threshold for subsidies in a higher cost area, will be paying approximately 32% of their income toward health insurance or $18,999 per year. <--- Because we all know these are the healthy years, and the time in a person's life where they would prefer paying for insurance than putting any extra money away for retirement.
http://www.ncls.org/...th/hlthinspremcredits.pdf
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Based on the data I am seeing and the research I did the ACA is a failure. More power to you if your employer pays for your insurance, you get free healthcare thru some gov or union job, or your premiums are lower, because you live in a state like Arizona. While I can understand the need for reform and how this supposedly helped those who could not get health insurance due to pre-existing conditions, this was not the solution.
Having been mentored to not point fingers at a problem without at least providing an alternate solution I offer the following: The correct answer would have been to open up the various programs offered by Federal and State govs to be purchased by corporations and individuals. Medicare is supposedly going to be run out of money in 20 or so years, and I would think the gov would love to get extra cash coming into its coffers. What would the difference be, whether i paid Medicare or Blue Cross, Tri-Care or Blue Cross, CHIP or Blue Cross? As long as at the end of the day bottom line i get the healthcare I need. Someone wants to support the military, they buy tri-care, someone wants to ensure medicare will still be available when they retire buys medicare, or someoneis thinking of the poor children they buy CHIPs. The extra money in those programs would allow them to reach out and help more people or provide even better coverage for those in need. Putting your money where your mouth is, you care about poor people, then invest your dollars where it would do the most good, big health insurance Companies is not it when it comes to helping poor people get what they need.
The other aspect to this solution is that it does create a cap insurance companies can charge, and/or they would need to differentiate themselves and offer a superior service people would be willing to pay extra for. Kind of like Fedex, UPS, vs. the US Post Office, they can charge a little more and still have the capacity to compete, however very few people are going to pay 3x the price for a similar service.
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