Health Care Thread

Kreugen

Kreugen

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The problem is a lot of the plans being cancelled are cancelled because they were so far from being compliant that they were incredibly cheap. So people who were getting really cheap (but bad) insurance are now having to buy plans that are much more expensive but mostly in line with what most of us thought of as "normal" insurance at normal price.

Overall it's an increase of 40% of the average individual's premium. (according to a libertarian think-tank quoted by Forbes so... grain of salt and all that) But I can't even tell the difference between plans from a few years ago and the ACA plans offered now. The price structure looks exactly the same.

It's kind of like if you were forced to replace any Visio TVs you might own with one that has more than one HDMI port and didn't randomly freeze up and need to be unplugged and rebooted. If you didn't buy a cheap wal-mart piece of shit brand to begin with, you wouldn't notice or care.
 
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Draegan_sl

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Borzak_sl said:
The cancellation notice I received said the entire company was shutting down the ability to get insurance without going thru an exchange so pretty sure I'm SOL. Probably just pay the fine till shit gets straightened out as I'm pretty much self insured.
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You can always find out what insurance companies are on your state's exchange and call them directly.
 
Borzak

Borzak

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Draegan_sl said:
You can always find out what insurance companies are on your state's exchange and call them directly.
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The only reason I carried major medical insurance was because here if you didn't have insurance they took you to the charity hospital. It was basically a card to keep from going to the chairty hospital in case of an accident.

My Dr. has already said he's not going to dick with Obamacare and already doesn't take medicare. Before they changed it a few years ago I had a HSA with major medical and liked it a lot. With the fine being so low I really don't see the point of getting the "insurance" right now until either the fine goes up or it settles out and I know who is going to accept it and where.
 
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Draegan_sl

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I see. To me, HSA are risky. You get one major disease and you're fucking done unless you have faith in whatever catastrophic insurance you have, if you have it.

Also, what does it mean that a Dr won't have dick to do with Obamacare? It's all private insurance mandates.
 
Khane

Khane

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Draegan_sl said:
I see. To me, HSA are risky. You get one major disease and you're fucking done unless you have faith in whatever catastrophic insurance you have, if you have it.
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What makes you say this? I'm pretty sure you can't have an HSA unless you have a high deductible insurance plan. Are there people out there who contribute to HRA's and FSA's in lieu of getting insurance? I'm pretty sure the vast, overwhelming majority of people who contribute to these plans do it to further subsidize their healthcare costs along with their insurance. It's supplemental. Anyone using it any other way is taking on a risk obviously, but if you aren't willing to spend the money on insurance I don't see why you'd spend the money contributing to any of those types of pre-tax health accounts.
 
Cad

Cad

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Borzak_sl said:
My Dr. has already said he's not going to dick with Obamacare and already doesn't take medicare.
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This makes no sense, all the insurance on the exchanges are from private insurance companies. Its doubtful any Dr. could even tell the difference between an exchange plan and a work-offered plan.
 
Hoss

Hoss

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BurnemWizfyre_sl said:
Do you still hate your parents from finding out about all the childhood lies they told you? Oh fuck lets be honest, you still believe in Santa and the Easter bunny don't you?
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Only Santa Clause. The Easter Bunny is just silly. I don't even understand why you put them in the same sentence.
 
Hoss

Hoss

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Draegan_sl said:
I see. To me, HSA are risky. You get one major disease and you're fucking done unless you have faith in whatever catastrophic insurance you have, if you have it.
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HD/HSA plans have a maximum annual out of pocket amount. That's the amount I was talking about when I said that it takes about 2 years to build up enough money in the account to cover your worst case scenario. There are 2 amounts listed, say for instance $3000 / $6000. Anything under the first amount is 100% paid for by you out of the HSA. After that first number, you pay 20% of the medical bills until you hit the higher number. After that, you pay nothing else. That's what catastrophic insurance is. To be honest, until 5 minutes ago, I thought all plans had a catastrophic maximum out of pocket. But since you don't seem to be aware of one with your plan, I'm not so sure anymore.


Cad_sl said:
Okay but you realize medical expenses are generally deductible anyway (over 7.5% of AGI) so the non-taxable income part isn't terribly relevant. Unless you're talking nickel and dime doctor visits and such, and in that case, who cares?
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I've never been able to deduct medical expense, and I don't see a way I would ever be able to do it because of the maximum 'out of pocket' that my insurance has. Plus, I'd be willing to bet that money out of an HSA doesn't even qualify as a medical expense for that deduction.
 
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Burnesto

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Borzak_sl said:
The only reason I carried major medical insurance was because here if you didn't have insurance they took you to the charity hospital. It was basically a card to keep from going to the chairty hospital in case of an accident.

My Dr. has already said he's not going to dick with Obamacare and already doesn't take medicare. Before they changed it a few years ago I had a HSA with major medical and liked it a lot. With the fine being so low I really don't see the point of getting the "insurance" right now until either the fine goes up or it settles out and I know who is going to accept it and where.
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How is your doctor going to know when the insurance still comes from a private company?
 
Borzak

Borzak

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Cad_sl said:
This makes no sense, all the insurance on the exchanges are from private insurance companies. Its doubtful any Dr. could even tell the difference between an exchange plan and a work-offered plan.
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Because what's in the law, plans have to follow the law. He said it wasn't worth the hassle with the reimbursements and the way referalls would work.

He also doesn't take regular insurance as far as I know either. I have always paid cash. If he wants to refer me to another Dr. he just does so and I pay them cash as well. My mother will have to change Dr.'s under her new plan as well now because she lives 30 minutes from "town" and that "town" is across state lines and they sent a letter stating that it's now out of the plan and it's the only plan available to her. So now she has to drive 2 hours to Jackson because it is in state and available with the plan.

I guess you would call my Dr. a boutique Dr. for lack of a better term. He limits his patients and you get personalized care including house visits if necessary.
 
Borzak

Borzak

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Khane_sl said:
What makes you say this? I'm pretty sure you can't have an HSA unless you have a high deductible insurance plan. Are there people out there who contribute to HRA's and FSA's in lieu of getting insurance? I'm pretty sure the vast, overwhelming majority of people who contribute to these plans do it to further subsidize their healthcare costs along with their insurance. It's supplemental. Anyone using it any other way is taking on a risk obviously, but if you aren't willing to spend the money on insurance I don't see why you'd spend the money contributing to any of those types of pre-tax health accounts.
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I loved my HSA plan. Put money into the plan with a tax advantage and pay for what ever you need to out of it like prescriptions and Dr. visits. Major medical limits your maximum out of pocket expense and is really cheap since it's a high deductible which should be equal to what you have deposited in the plan after a few years. At the time I had it you could also pull money out as you got older for a home purchase or colledge education of a kid and still not get penalized tax wise, but I believe they changed that a few years ago (neither applied to me).
 
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Disp_sl

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Wingz_sl said:
Once the government is giving all these subsidies for sick people. Lets face it, healthy people are not the ones signing up on the exchanges it'll be the people that need health care.
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No one that I've signed up so far in the individual marketplace is a sick person. Every person or family I've enrolled so far is reasonably healthy for their age, with high blood pressure being the worst pre-existing condition I've come across. Over the past month I've met with or emailed/phoned with about 50 people and the only people I've run across that have serious illnesses are people who are already insured through group plans at work and inquiring about their options. But they already have coverage. I'm sure there will be plenty of sick people enrolling, but this doom and gloom of "only sick people will enroll" is some seriously misleading hyperbole.
 
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Picasso3

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Borzak_sl said:
Because what's in the law, plans have to follow the law. He said it wasn't worth the hassle with the reimbursements and the way referalls would work.

He also doesn't take regular insurance as far as I know either. I have always paid cash.
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/thread
 
Synj

Synj

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Cad_sl said:
I don't know which group plans you're referring to but my wife's employer pays like $1700/mo for our insurance which has like a $1200/person $2500/family deductible, while comparable deductible plans in the exchange (here in TX) are like 1100-1200/mo.
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As I said, I'm sure that many employer funded group plans are already compliant with the ACA but I suspect that we'll see many more cancellations once this legislation is applied in January. I think I've heard figures of 5 million individual policies being cancelled? Would it not stand to reason that the higher requirements will have an equally significant impact on group plans once applied? That's just cancellations, it doesn't even address the promises of premium reductions (a promise which was absurd to make in the first place).

I'm not stating this as gospel, just how I'm interpreting.
 
Synj

Synj

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Kreugen_sl said:
The problem is a lot of the plans being cancelled are cancelled because they were so far from being compliant that they were incredibly cheap. So people who were getting really cheap (but bad) insurance are now having to buy plans that are much more expensive but mostly in line with what most of us thought of as "normal" insurance at normal price.

Overall it's an increase of 40% of the average individual's premium. (according to a libertarian think-tank quoted by Forbes so... grain of salt and all that) But I can't even tell the difference between plans from a few years ago and the ACA plans offered now. The price structure looks exactly the same.

It's kind of like if you were forced to replace any Visio TVs you might own with one that has more than one HDMI port and didn't randomly freeze up and need to be unplugged and rebooted. If you didn't buy a cheap wal-mart piece of shit brand to begin with, you wouldn't notice or care.
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Not being confrontational here but who gets to decide what is valuable? That's like telling someone they have to have a $1000 NVIDIA 3DFX Voodoo Monster 3 graphics card because they wont have enough teraflops to run EQ when all they want is to play minesweeper.
 
fanaskin

fanaskin

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do you have any idea how many times democrats on this board say things like "people are too stupid to vote their own interest", or "there's too many stupid people and they breed faster than smart people" and shit like that, they literally feel empowered to think they know better than most people.
 
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