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TheWarriorMonk
Guest
The $450 number is within the ballpark. Where I live $50 will get an individual a HDHP plan wi/drugs.
States aim to sell Affordable Care Act’s changes to young, healthy Americans
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Jeanne_S
Guest
I am a healthy 60 year old female,non smoker.I currently pay 445.00 per month for a 10,000.00 deductible.Self employed,husband started Medicare this year. I realize I now fall in to a higher risk category,given my age,however,we have always paid a lot for health coverage.Looks like that will continue to be the case.
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runningdude
Guest
The health insurance exchange (which the OP here opposes) would give you a theoretic “one-stop” opportunity to compare rates to test your hypothesis that you cannot get a better dealI am a healthy 60 year old female,non smoker.I currently pay 445.00 per month for a 10,000.00 deductible.Self employed,husband started Medicare this year. I realize I now fall in to a higher risk category,given my age,however,we have always paid a lot for health coverage.Looks like that will continue to be the case.
Ideally, more young people paying into the system would lower the prices paid by older adults. My insurance is currently through my parents, but I could get fairly generous coverage at the equivalent of $200 per month if I bought coverage through my school.
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markomalley
Guest
Your problem is that a $10K deductible may no longer be legal.I am a healthy 60 year old female,non smoker.I currently pay 445.00 per month for a 10,000.00 deductible.Self employed,husband started Medicare this year. I realize I now fall in to a higher risk category,given my age,however,we have always paid a lot for health coverage.Looks like that will continue to be the case.
From PL 111-148 (the Affordable Care Act statute):
REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO COST-SHARING.—
(1) ANNUAL LIMITATION ON COST-SHARING.—
(A) 2014.—The cost-sharing incurred under a health plan with respect to self-only coverage or coverage other than self-only coverage for a plan year beginning in 2014 shall not exceed the dollar amounts in effect under section 223(c)(2)(A)(ii) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 for self-only and family coverage, respectively, for taxable years beginning in 2014.
And then from the Internal Revenue Code:
(2) High deductible health plan
(A) In general
The term “high deductible health plan” means a health plan—
(i) which has an annual deductible which is not less than—
(I) $1,000 for self-only coverage, and
(II) twice the dollar amount in subclause (I) for family coverage, and
(ii) the sum of the annual deductible and the other annual out-of-pocket expenses required to be paid under the plan (other than for premiums) for covered benefits does not exceed—
(I) $5,000 for self-only coverage, and
(II) twice the dollar amount in subclause (I) for family coverage.
So, since your husband is on Medicare now, it looks like your deductible will be $5,000 at max.
(Having said that, I haven’t looked at the reams and reams of regulations, so I have no idea how they’ve twisted the law around)
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powerofk
Guest
The astronomical price on health insurance is due to the astronomical price on health care. In fact - I might be wrong here - but I think only the price of college tuition has increased at a faster rate than health care over the last 10 years. Have you seen how much a simple visit to your Primary Care Physician is (before insurance)? Often times, it’s well over $100 for a 15-minute-or-less visit - more if you require shots, lab work, etc. Lab work often costs hundreds of dollars for simple screenings. A 30-minute outpatient surgery costs over $1000, plus the cost of anesthesia, which is charged separately. And forget about childbirth! Until we can get the cost of care down, insurance prices are going to continue to skyrocket. The reason why insurance prices are rising due to Obamacare is because insurance providers have to pay more because they are now required to cover people who have more, and more expensive, health care visits. Before, they would simply drop these people. As I see it, Obamacare’s biggest problem right now, as far as the USCCB is concerned, is not so much the law itself, but the interpretation of key parts of the law by the HHS department, as, even though the law is thousands of pages long, it allows for heavy interpretation by the HHS.
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ProVobis
Guest
I heard the average cost involving a c-section now is around $50,000.
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St_Francis
Guest
The problem is that the policies of the young are weighted differently than they used to be. Under ACA, the insurance policy for an elderly person cannot cost more than 3 times what a similar policy would cost a young person. However, the medical costs of an elderly person are much higher than 3 times the costs of young adults, while their costs are generally 6 times that of young adults.
I looked for insurance a few years ago in my state and was unable to find a true catastrophic insurance policy. The difference in price between a $5000 deductible policy (the highest-deductible policy I could find) and a regular policy was negligible (I would have thought that kind of deductible would be worth something, but no).
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Jeanne_S
Guest
The scary fact is c sections have now become the norm rather than the exception.Why you ask,because Dr.s are so afraid of lawsuits,that and the insurance co now have criteria in place causing the need for a c section more frequently.If a woman labors beyond a certain prescribed time they will automatically do a c section.
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zz912
Guest
Not exactly. The reason that health insurance and health care prices (and college tuition as well) are rising is because of government interference in the market. If you look at medical procedures where the govt is not heavily involved, the prices have actually dropped dramatically. Take a look at LASIK surgery, or plastic surgery. These are covered by insurance, and are not riddled with govt mandates, and the prices for these have dropped dramatically over the last two decades.
Plus, we have a HUGE problem with a misunderstanding of health care PLANS, and health INSURANCE. We have the first, we do not have the second. Insurance is protection against UNEXPECTED events. Health care plans cover everything, including routine maintenance. Imagine what would happen to your car insurance premiums if the policy had to cover oil changes, new tires, brake repairs, maintenance, or any other routine expenses. Prices would SKYROCKET.
Additionally, we have politicians who pass laws that mandate all kinds of coverage, whether people want them or not. And these mandates cost money. But politicians don’t pay for it, individuals do.
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Jeanne_S
Guest
Good point!
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SamH
Guest
See what government intervention does?
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shockerfan
Guest
Sam,
spot on. What no liberal seems to get is this: The government does NOTHING cost effectively.
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ProVobis
Guest
I see your point, but how do you explain rising vet and dental costs?
I think perhaps the system is such that government cannot get uninvolved with private enterprise any more. Witness the Federal Reserve and whom they deal with. Witness Sarbanes-Oxley. Witness the Too Big To Fail structure.
As the Chinese representative said in the movie (“Too Big To Fail”) “It seems that in the U.S. the relationship between government and private industry is not so simple.” On top of that you have foreign governments that are always threatening to sell their bonds and stock in U.S. companies and Treasuries. Definitely not simple.
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St_Francis
Guest
An MRI for a dog or cat costs from half to 2/3 the cost for a human, despite the fact that animals need an additional veterinary person to do the anesthesia and a specialized machine for it. IOW, altho the costs are considerably higher for an animal MRI, the price is considerably lower.
As to dental, Medicare and Medicaid cover dental and orthodontics, so they are also affected by the government activity in that area.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Maybe this will work, but one wonders whether (except for young married people who want children) it will be like trying to sell hearing aids and dentu-creme to 16-year-olds.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
School based policies have always been relatively inexpensive, for the very good reason that if one becomes very sick one is no longer able to be a student and loses coverage. It’s like the “well worker effect” in industry.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Being something of a contrarian, I would love to see them actually do it. They would lose their shirts in favor of the buyers. Buying U.S. assets with trade dollars can be a very expensive proposition, as the Japanese and oil Arabs learned the hard way in the 1980s.
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zz912
Guest
Vet prices are actually about the same that they always have been. If you look at the same services compared to previous years. Now we have much more detailed, specialized, and technologically advanced treatments that are being introduced to vet medicine. Twenty years ago, you didn’t have MRI’s and complicated surgery for pets. Now you have everything under the sun. So it is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Now here is the thing, look at these prices a decade from now. The prices for these new procedures will be greatly reduced. Expensive equipment will have had a chance to recoup costs, technology will get better, and other innovations will make it cheaper. What you are seeing in vet medicine is how LASIK looked when it first came out. The surgery was tens of thousands of dollars. Now LASIK is pretty cheap, couple thousand or so. You will see the same in vet medicine.
For dentists, what you see is a little different. First, there has been some new technologies, which are expensive at first. But you also see a different mindset, where some dentists have changed into a sales mode, where they are product-pushing instead of practicing dentistry. This will fade after a while, when people get annoyed with it. What you also see are price-pressures from areas where the govt IS interfering in the market, such as insurance mandates, and Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacare.
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RACJ
Guest
Error.
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RACJ
Guest
The bunk beds that young people have constructed with their own ill-informed votes is about to collapse, with all of them lying on the bottom mattress. 
Rob
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