The Obama administration on Friday unveiled data showing that many Americans with health insurance bought under the Affordable Care Act could face substantial price increases next year — in some cases as much as 20 percent — unless they switch plans.And just days after the midterm elections because stupid Americans.
The data became available just hours before the health insurance marketplace was to open to buyers seeking insurance for 2015.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Let's see what the NY Times decided to report in its Saturday edition
All the news fit to hide: "Cost of coverage under affordable care act to increase in 2015."
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The average premium increase for 2015 will be less than the norm before Obamacare. Insurance company participation in ACA coverage is up 25% from 2014.
How about the deductibles?
From the Times report:
"A 40-year-old in Nashville, with the cheapest midlevel, or silver plan, will pay $220 a month next year, compared to $181 a month this year, for the same plan. The least expensive plan is offered by another insurer, Community Health Alliance, one of the so-called co-op plans created under the federal law. It offers coverage for a monthly premium of $194.
But the lower premium means that consumers will have to pay a much larger annual deductible, $4,000, rather than $2,000. A policyholder who becomes seriously ill or has a costly chronic condition could pay hundreds of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses.
In addition, different health plans often have different networks of doctors and hospitals and cover different drugs, meaning that consumers who change plans may have to pay more for the same medicines."
And change the plans they must.
It was one of Obama’s sneakiest tricks to singlehandedly invent the “lower premiums means higher deductibles” concept of insurance coverage.
Maybe our unfortunate 40-year-old in Nashville should consider buying a bronze plan. In Nashville, they only cost 73% of the national ACA average.
In all, four thousand or so 40-year-old Nashville enrollees with the cheapest midlevel plan face the tyranny of weighing a $500 rise in premiums against a $2,000 deductible, a decision no insurance purchaser has ever had to make before. Meanwhile, the expected nationwide slowdown in 2014-15 price increases, in large part because of the ACA, is minus-1% to -1.5%.
*Average cost of coverage for a family of four in 2014: $16,832
*Projected cost of the same coverage by 2020 (as calculated before the ACA): $23,842
*The same projected cost by 2020, if the growth rate is slowed annually by 1%: $21,270
The punchline? $23,842 minus $21,270 is just about the magic number: $2,500.
"in large part because of the ACA"
Sure, sure, keep that close at heart.
Who said anything about PREMIUMS dropping $2500? Oh yeah, that guy.
Maybe our unfortunate 40-year-old in Nashville should consider buying a bronze plan. In Nashville, they only cost 73% of the national ACA average.
And probably have less than 73% chance of being accepted by his current doctor. Hey, no one ever promised you could keep your doctor if you changed plans. But then, the point isn't anyone's actual healthcare, it's finding any way to spin reality so that Obamacare doesn't look like such a fraud.
...projected cost by 2020... Haven't we learned from experience just how reliable those self-serving government estimates of future costs are?
Or maybe, considering the stupidity of the American voter, we haven't.
Health care will greet us as liberators. It'll pay for itself!
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