Minn. health care exchange's rates lowest so far

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MSSheBear said:
California had some major medical risk program that had too many applicants and high premiums. I think it is now defunct.
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I think many, if not most, states’ high-risk pools (CHIPS, etc.) will now also be defunct, with the theoretical increase in competition among the insurance companies.
 
lcburgundy said:
People still have no reason to shop around or make informed decisions about where to get care or how much of it they want.
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The exchanges should make it more convenient to compare plans among several insurance carriers, who now can’t deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. All theory at this point, however, and each state will have its own exchange or default to the fed “exchanges.”
 
Ridgerunner said:
I think you have misunderstood everything. Neither Fox nor the Repub party directs Tea Party people. The Repub mainliners, in fact, don’t particularly like them.
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Republicans started the Tea Party movement in an attempt to create huge anger for the midterm elections; FOX News provided free advertising and made sure to maximize attendance at all Tea Party rallies. Just because Republicans lost control of the movement, leading to a semi-permanent loss of the US Senate, doesn’t mean that they didn’t start it.
Ridgerunner said:
The eruptions at Town Hall meetings represented the opposition of citizens to a very bad law that had already passed. Remember? They jumped on those politicians who had already voted for Obamacare. The majority of Americans still don’t want it. Are you blaming the Repubs for that too? I assume you are, since Democrats blame Repubs now for every adverse thing.
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About half of the people who “don’t want it,” when prodded further in polls, say that it didn’t go far enough. Be careful what you wish for. Also:

finance.senate.gov/issue/?id=32be19bd-491e-4192-812f-f65215c1ba65

Notice how it didn’t even pass out of committee until October 13th, 2009. The Tea Party “protests” (read: bully tactics shutting down legitimate questions over the Act constituents had) were in August 2009.
Ridgerunner said:
Stupak didn’t have the Democrat votes for his amendment, and certainly not the support of Obama. His amendment was dead before Brown was ever elected. The Senate had already passed Obamacare before Brown took office.
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Not true. As pointed out above, it had already passed the House by a mile, but Senate Republicans played a political game of “pass it without abortion restrictions or don’t pass it at all” hoping that it would kill the bill since Scott Brown deprived Democrats of full control of the Senate. In response, it got passed with the only abortion restrictions being the pre-existing Hyde Amendment and a meaningless signing statement by Obama, as Senate Democrats had to pass any amendments through reconciliation, meaning they had to be budgetary in nature.
Ridgerunner said:
It is amazing the excuses Democrats make for Obamacare, and the blame they put on Repubs for the consequences of their own actions alone. Remember? The members of congress hadn’t even read the bill before they passed it. Also remember that Repubs were not even allowed in the committee meetings when the Dems worked on the bill. Remember Pelosi saying they had to pass Obamacare in order to know what’s in it?
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:rolleyes:

You mean how she said that when it was in committee, so that people would get it to the House floor where it could be better read and debated? Imagine if a Republican had said that about a tax cut bill in committee. There would be no uproar about it, because everyone would understand he meant that they needed to get it out of committee to debate it as a full chamber. But our conservative mainstream media strikes again, taking Pelosi’s comments out of context.

Also, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, and Olympia Snowe were all part of the bipartisan drafting committee; just because Grassley started talking about “death panels” when he got afraid of the Tea Party and Enzi headed for the door as quickly as possible doesn’t mean Republicans were “not even allowed in committee meetings.” Heck, Olympia Snowe voted for the committee’s draft.
 
ProVobis said:
I think many, if not most, states’ high-risk pools (CHIPS, etc.) will now also be defunct, with the theoretical increase in competition among the insurance companies.
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California will have, I believe, three insurance companies on the exchanges. Three means competition only for siblings.
 
SMGS127 said:
Also, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, and Olympia Snowe were all part of the bipartisan drafting committee; just because Grassley started talking about “death panels” when he got afraid of the Tea Party and Enzi headed for the door as quickly as possible doesn’t mean Republicans were “not even allowed in committee meetings.” Heck, Olympia Snowe voted for the committee’s draft.
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Better than that.

Senate Dems adopted 161 amendments and key GOP planks while soft-pedaling the public option.
Almost no one is noting the extraordinary influence Republicans had on the healthcare reform bill crafted by the Senate, as it made its way through the committee process last year. The bill approved by Sen. Christopher Dodd’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, for instance, included 161 amendments authored by Republicans. Only 49 Republican amendments were rejected out of 210 considered. Yet the bill got zero Republican votes when it passed out of the committee.
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linked from

articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-03-26/national/35449311_1_health-reform-health-care-public-option
 
SMGS127 said:
Republicans started the Tea Party movement in an attempt to create huge anger for the midterm elections; FOX News provided free advertising and made sure to maximize attendance at all Tea Party rallies. Just because Republicans lost control of the movement, leading to a semi-permanent loss of the US Senate, doesn’t mean that they didn’t start it. **Undoubtedly there were a lot of Repubs in the early Tea Party. Lots of Libertarians, too. But it was not a Republican movement, per se. As hard as it might be for a lockstep Democrat to believe, there actually is diversity among conservatives. **

About half of the people who “don’t want it,” when prodded further in polls, say that it didn’t go far enough. Be careful what you wish for. As I understand it, Obama didn’t want it either. But no matter what, the majority of people don’t want it. Nevertheless, no effort to alter or rescind it can get past Harry Reid

finance.senate.gov/issue/?id=32be19bd-491e-4192-812f-f65215c1ba65

Notice how it didn’t even pass out of committee until October 13th, 2009. The Tea Party “protests” (read: bully tactics shutting down legitimate questions over the Act constituents had) were in August 2009.
And, of course, Scott Brown wasn’t elected then. You have shifted from blaming Brown for the failure to protect the unborn to blaming the Tea Party. Either way, the Democrats passed it without protection for the unborn, and the Repubs opposed it. Democrats really need to own up to the fact that they’re the pro-abortion party and stop trying to blame its opponents for their own evil.

Not true. As pointed out above, it had already passed the House by a mile, but Senate Republicans played a political game of “pass it without abortion restrictions or don’t pass it at all” hoping that it would kill the bill since Scott Brown deprived Democrats of full control of the Senate. In response, it got passed with the only abortion restrictions being the pre-existing Hyde Amendment and a meaningless signing statement by Obama, as Senate Democrats had to pass any amendments through reconciliation, meaning they had to be budgetary in nature.
The original House bill wasn’t even close to what Obamacare ended up being. The House bill (all Democrat votes) passed a “single payer” bill. Reid didn’t have the votes for it in the Senate, so they came up with Obamacare; a totally different thing. Again, the pro-abortion partisans blaming the prolife partisans for their own evil. But then, evil does try to hide itself.

You mean how she said that when it was in committee, so that people would get it to the House floor where it could be better read and debated? Imagine if a Republican had said that about a tax cut bill in committee. There would be no uproar about it, because everyone would understand he meant that they needed to get it out of committee to debate it as a full chamber. But our conservative mainstream media strikes again, taking Pelosi’s comments out of context.Nevertheless, she said it, didn’t she? And that at a time when they weren’t allowing Repubs to see what they were working on. And if you think the mainstream media is conservative, you are surely to the left of Karl Marx.

Also, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, and Olympia Snowe were all part of the bipartisan drafting committee; just because Grassley started talking about “death panels” when he got afraid of the Tea Party and Enzi headed for the door as quickly as possible doesn’t mean Republicans were “not even allowed in committee meetings.” Heck, Olympia Snowe voted for the committee’s draft. Liberal Olympia Snowe voted to let it out of committee for a full chamber vote, not for the bill itself. Was that tantamount to voting for its passage? Yes, and I think most would agree to that.
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ProVobis said:
I just got a quote through the Illinois website (this is not official)

healthcare.com/insurance/online-quotes/?CID=3685&SRC=hc_google&Sub_ID=healthcare%20illinois&position=1t1&google_network=g&creativeid=31120256699&matchtype=b&mobile=&bw_keyword=healthcare%20illinois&bw_state=Illinois&utm_content=31120256699&kid=196168403355531&pdv=c&gclid=COjbmOy0ybkCFdBaMgod83MAUA

I found that the premiums charged for a 64-yr old male will be roughly about 1/2 of the current ICHIPS premium.
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That doesn’t suprise me, though one would have to know his income to know what his costs will be under Obamacare.

Looks like, overall, Obamacare is going to increase premiums beyond what they would have been. forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/08/09/medicare-actuary-obamacare-will-triple-the-growth-rate-of-net-insurance-costs/

I have seen much worse rates of increase if projected out a few years. Obamacare is essentially a massive redistribution of income, with a lot of bureaucratic expense added on. One has to wonder whether simply subsidizing something like ICHIPS would have been a much simpler and less costly way to go.

When the government is promising subsidies to everybody with an income up to $94,000, there can’t be any serious pretense that its purpose isn’t simply to equalize income outcomes within the middle class.
 
One has to wonder whether simply subsidizing something like ICHIPS would have been a much simpler and less costly way to go.
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As there was “only” $5 billion so allocated by Obamacare, it did reduce the ICHIPS premiums a little bit but not much, considering this was split by 50 states. Your point is valid, though.

I imagine this must be a nightmare for actuaries. On one hand they don’t know how many healthy people this will draw into the pool and on the other hand, there are constant threats that certain parts will be defunded. The rates that they set now are IMO very experimental and subject to heavy changes in the future.
 
I have a feeling they are playing with the numbers… this law is a disaster… hopefully it gets defunded.
Ridgerunner said:
The proof is in the reality of it as it actually happens, not in the projections.

And if the abortifacient, contraceptive, sterilization mandate isn’t removed, are you still for it?

Something about this isn’t adding up. From the article:

“About half of an expected 1 million participants are expected to qualify for federal tax credits to help defray the cost.”

Half an expected one million participants? There are over five million people in Minnesota. What’s the story on the other four and a half million? Are they citing rates ONLY for those who qualify for the subsidies, and perhaps only some of those? Since the subsidies are a sliding scale based on income, I don’t see how this writer can say any rate applies to “a 25 year old non-smoker” or a “60 year old”, because their effective rates actually depend on their incomes.

The article says some people with incomes of $30,000 and under will get free healthcare.
That would be true for a family of four, but it’s Medicaid. Obamacare adds about 17 million people to Medicaid rolls. Included in that is a family of four making $31,000. People with Medicaid are already having trouble getting doctors to take them because the reimbursement rates are so low. And if 17 million more are added? Wonder how many of them had employer-provided insurance previously that WASN’T Medicaid. The article doesn’t tell us.

This article isn’t telling the whole story. One hopes it isn’t just a puff piece for Obamacare, but it has the earmarks of one.
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Agreed… they don’t have to skew the numbers… this is going to spiral out of control. IMO.

For the heck of it… I tried to get coverage to see what the cost would be… well over $500 ( Like $515 to $579 )… that is NOT cheaper. ( California )

They really need to defund this… the sooner the better.
_Abyssinia said:
I do not know what is going on in Indiana and if they are fudging numbers that is inexcusable but do state governors really need to try hard to falsify numbers to make the Affordable Care Act look terrible, when study after study says premiums will rise?
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Jeffrey_David said:
Agreed… they don’t have to skew the numbers… this is going to spiral out of control. IMO.

For the heck of it… I tried to get coverage to see what the cost would be… well over $500 ( Like $515 to $579 )… that is NOT cheaper. ( California )

They really need to defund this… the sooner the better.
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Exchanges aren’t allowed to be online until October 1st. How did you “try to get coverage” before it even exists?
 
Jeffrey_David said:
I got a quote.
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Quotes are meaningless until exchanges come out. It’s like the difference between speculation on stocks and the reality when they’re released. For all you know, your “quote” could be about as meaningful as Facebook’s speculatory stock value :rolleyes:.
 
SMGS127 said:
Quotes are meaningless until exchanges come out. It’s like the difference between speculation on stocks and the reality when they’re released. For all you know, your “quote” could be about as meaningful as Facebook’s speculatory stock value :rolleyes:.
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But shouldn’t the burden of proof go the other way? When we had a system with which approximately 80% were satisfied, and nobody really knew who the other 20% were or why they were in the 20%, where was/is the evidence that totally changing the system would somehow result in an overall improvement?

There really never was any real study of it prior to its enactment. Nor, really, could there be, since almost nobody really knew what it provided. It was a “leap of faith” entirely, and that “faith” was political ideology to the extent anybody believed in it at all.

Now that people, including government actuaries, have realized that Obamacare represents a net cost to almost everyone and won’t cover at least 10% of the populace anyway, it strikes me as demanding a lot to require that people feel it on their hides for awhile before expressing any opinions about it.

There is a reason why so much of Obamacare was, and continues to be deferred. And that is that, at very best, this administration has no idea how it’s going to affect people and fears the reaction if it’s overwhelmingly negative.

At worst, they know full well.
 
SMGS127 said:
Exchanges aren’t allowed to be online until October 1st. How did you “try to get coverage” before it even exists?
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Just curious where did you hear that exchanges aren’t allowed to be online before October 1st?

Actually the law states the exchanges are to be online October 1st - a deadline few states are going to meet and as the date draws near it appears the Federal government won’t meet either. Nowhere have I heard they were not allowed to be online earlier.
 
SMGS127 said:
Quotes are meaningless until exchanges come out. It’s like the difference between speculation on stocks and the reality when they’re released. For all you know, your “quote” could be about as meaningful as Facebook’s speculatory stock value :rolleyes:.
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I also got a quote from the California website speculating about my income and I also had a quote for over $500. This is what it would be now without my preexisting conditions on the so-called open market here. This very likely what it will be in the long run, or perhaps it will be even higher!
 
SMGS127 said:
Quotes are meaningless until exchanges come out. It’s like the difference between speculation on stocks and the reality when they’re released. For all you know, your “quote” could be about as meaningful as Facebook’s speculatory stock value :rolleyes:.
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You mean like the value of these new health insurance policies? :rolleyes:
 
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