Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[Shawnee123]

Well, I remember working somewhere once that my insurance (me and husband) cost the same ("family") as one dude (him, wife, and nine children.) We hardly even used the insurance. That hardly seemed fair.

[classicman]

Family can be many - wife +multiple children. It mostly depends on how the tiers are set up. In this instance, it is all very common.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

I will just take advantage of the screwed up system and put it back on the system.

That's very sneaky of you, doing what they wanted everyone to do in the first place, only now you're saying you're only doing it to spite them. They want everyone to defer to the Federal plan, because ultimately they want to shift the whole system to single-payer. Of course it's going to be set up so it's cheaper for the states to do it that way.

[Lamplighter]

This sounds like what corporations did for employees with their pension plans.
First the corp. pays all of the pension, but quietly transfers the $ to their operating budget.
Then they entice the employees by setting up 401 plans where they match $ for $ of the employee's contribution.
Then gradually, the corp. drops it's matching $ until the employee is paying 100% of their own pension.
It all happens so smoothly there are no uprisings or riots.

So if it works with pensions, it's bound to work with health plans too.

[Pico and ME]

And as long as there is a surplus of workers looking for employment, they will get away with it. The labor force is in a severely vulnerable position right now and I don't think it will get better any time soon.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

This sounds like what corporations did for employees with their pension plans.
First the corp. pays all of the pension, but quietly transfers the $ to their operating budget.
Then they entice the employees by setting up 401 plans where they match $ for $ of the employee's contribution.
Then gradually, the corp. drops it's matching $ until the employee is paying 100% of their own pension.
It all happens so smoothly there are no uprisings or riots.

So if it works with pensions, it's bound to work with health plans too.

It is bad enough that the Corps do it and have been doing it for quite some time. It is worse when the gobberment does it and lies to the public with comments like "you can keep the health plan you have", when in fact they know damm well that you can't.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Do you think they should have said, 'You can keep the health plan you have, unless your employer changes the agreement you have with them'? Isn't that always a given?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Do you think they should have said, 'You can keep the health plan you have, unless your employer changes the agreement you have with them'? Isn't that always a given?

Actually, I do believe that was what the final version said, which most of us found out after the bill was passed, now we get the same thing under government control. Just because your plan changes does not mean that the costs will be radically different.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by classicman

Family can be many - wife +multiple children. It mostly depends on how the tiers are set up. In this instance, it is all very common.

From Here

Thystrup's business isn't the only one where premium increases are being blamed on the new health law. Celinda Lake runs the Democratic polling firm Lake Research. She said her firm's premiums are going up 20 percent.

"My broker told me that it's because of health insurance reform," she says.

But is it really?

Absolutely not, says Jay Angoff, who heads the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "It would be inaccurate and silly to blame it on the new law," he says.

Misinformation

"To the extent that the insurance companies blame the new law for rate increases, they know better," Angoff says. "They've said themselves that the new law would only raise rates by between 1 and 2 percent."

Insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski says there's still another reason premiums are rising so rapidly right now, particularly for individuals: the bad economy.

"What happens in a down economy is that people who are healthy have a tendency to drop their health insurance sooner, maybe [because] someone in the household has lost their job," he says. "But if you're sick, you're going to do everything you can — you'll take a second mortgage on the house if you have to — to pay your health insurance premiums because you think that maybe you're going to use the insurance."

That means the insurance risk pool is full of sicker people, and premiums go up faster. But Laszewski says even if the currently rising premiums can't be blamed directly on the new health law, its backers still have a very big problem: The law doesn't do enough to bring down the rising cost of health care.

[Happy Monkey]

There is one way that the health care bill may contribute to the higher premiums - as more parts of the bill phase in they won't be able to cheat you as much, so they're trying to do it as much as possible now. And if they can blame it on the health care bill, and foment support for its repeal, so much the better.

[TheMercenary]

Dig in bitches..... who gets a break?

http://www.hhs.gov/ociio/regulations...or_waiver.html

[Lamplighter]

http://www.healthreform.gov/newsroom...of_rights.html

So what does getting a waiver for 2011 (only) actually do help or hurt the individuals getting benefits from the "issuer" ?

It sounds as though it's more of a book-keeping problem that some states have (minimum) plan requirements that health plan issuers must offer, or some companies/unions are offering plans for 2011 that do not meet the costs / benefits of the fed requirements, BUT that these will be corrected in subsequent years. Is that the case ?

What else am I missing ?

* Restricted Annual Dollar Limits on Coverage. Even more aggressive than lifetime limits are annual dollar limits on what an insurance company will pay for health care. Annual dollar limits are less common than lifetime limits, involving 8 percent of large employer plans, 14 percent of small employer plans, and 19 percent of individual market plans. But for people with medical costs that hit these limits, the consequences can be devastating.
o One study found that 10 percent of cancer patients reached a limit of what insurance would pay for treatment – and a quarter of families of cancer patients used up all or most of their savings on treatment.5

The rules will phase out the use of annual dollar limits over the next three years until 2014 when the Affordable Care Act bans them for most plans. Plans issued or renewed beginning September 23, 2010, will be allowed to set annual limits no lower than $750,000. This minimum limit will be raised to $1.25 million beginning September 23, 2011, and to $2 million beginning on September 23, 2012. These limits apply to all employer plans and all new individual market plans. For plans issued or renewed beginning January 1, 2014, all annual dollar limits on coverage of essential health benefits will be prohibited

Employers and insurers that want to delay complying with these rules will have to win permission from the Federal government by demonstrating that their current annual limits are necessary to prevent a significant loss of coverage or increase in premiums. Limited benefit insurance plans – which are often used by employers to provide benefits to part-time workers — are examples of insurers that might seek this kind of delay. These restricted annual dollar limits apply to all insurance plans except for individual market plans that are grandfathered.

[Happy Monkey]

An amusing tale:

An anti-healthcare-reform incoming GOP Representative was outraged when he learned that his healthcare coverage would take a month to kick in. Apparently, despite being a doctor, he was unaware of COBRA when asking what he would do during the gap. He asked if he could buy coverage from the government in the interim, apparently thinking that the public option actually existed.

When challenged on the apparent contradiction, his spokesman,

Nix said Harris, who is the father of five, wasn’t being hypocritical – he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government-run health care.

Of course, the government's health care isn't government-run, and this "inefficiency" is actually better than average.

[TheMercenary]

Well he will fit right in with the other idiot who passed Obamacare....

[TheMercenary]

One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements.

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010...kers-children/