Obamacare...(new title): GOP DEATH PLAN: Don-Ryan's Express

[chipwhich]

My wife takes 2 pills a day. The two pills cost 32 dollars A DAY.  I wont have any money to put into the HSA - I'll be paying the 0% coverage on her pills.  And her lab work twice a month.  And my childrens visits. Out of pocket.  There will be no HSA build up until after June.  What sacrifices will I have to make to get that far?  No cable, no internet, turn off cellphones, basically ruin my quality of life just because someone pushed an agenda that we citizens do not get any input on.

 

Just out of curiosity - how much did you pay before as opposed to now for your employees coverage?  And was is a PPO, HMO?

 

Sorry, but if you have to pay 32 dollars a day, you have to do payroll deductions to the HSA and refund yourself otherwise you are paying for the drugs post tax...which doesn't make sense to you financially.

 

I switched to a high deductible plan a few years ago...but I fund my employees whole deductible by depositing it on their H.S.A.  I don't remember the specifics but basically Blue Cross Blue Shield raised my rates for the non high deductible plan so much that it was cheaper to fully fund deductibles and pay insurance.  It's only going to get worse.

 

I offer both HMO and PPO to my employees.  PPO adds a cost to the employee.

Edited October 31, 2013 by chipwhich

[Gallen5862]

Republican Senator Ron Johnson and Democrat  Senator Mary Landrieu will propose a bill called the "You can Keep Your Plan If You Like It Plan" to grandfather the health plans that were cancelled. The white house is against it but the senators said they are basing it on the Presidents promise.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Gallen5862

[skinsmarydu]

Sorry, but if you have to pay 32 dollars a day, you have to do payroll deductions to the HSA and refund yourself otherwise you are paying for the drugs post tax...which doesn't make sense to you financially.

 

I switched to a high deductible plan a few years ago...but I fund my employees whole deductible by depositing it on their H.S.A.  I don't remember the specifics but basically Blue Cross Blue Shield raised my rates for the non high deductible plan so much that it was cheaper to fully fund deductibles and pay insurance.  It's only going to get worse.

 

I offer both HMO and PPO to my employees.  PPO adds a cost to the employee.

Another question...do you have 51 employees?  Or is this something you do to be a kind & generous employer?  (no sarcasm...just curious & starry-eyed, wishing my boss gave a crap about me!)  Would I be going too far in asking what your business is?  Sorry if I missed it. 

[Mocountyskins]

Obamacare 

 

Free Market health care. Fixt

[chipwhich]

Another question...do you have 51 employees?  Or is this something you do to be a kind & generous employer?  (no sarcasm...just curious & starry-eyed, wishing my boss gave a crap about me!)  Would I be going too far in asking what your business is?  Sorry if I missed it. 

 

I now have about 80 employees.  Government/Commercial Computer/IT Services.  Built the health care website for Obamacare......kidding.

Not being generous   Have to offer what the competition does.

Obamacare 

 

Free Market health care. Fixt

 

Affordable Care Act

Fixt

[Mocountyskins]

Free market is the way to go. More competition causes lower prices, more hospitals pop up, more doctors pop up, quality goes up because of the competition, insurance companies compete over people who have pre-existing illnesses because of the competition they can't be as picky. And you get rid of the battles that leave you stuck between the insurance company and the provider. Universal health care blows. That quality is so damn bad people die why they are waiting for treatment and just sit in their own ooze. Lines slow down, quality slows down, testing times slow down, surgery slow down, All of the people that I know that live in Canada or the UK always would come to the United States for anything serious or highly reccomend it because their situation is so piss poor. But everyone just wants to jump on the "Universal health care is what we need, free meds and not letting people die because they are poor" train while failing to see that countries that have universal health care are in just as bad as shape as we are if not worse.

[chipwhich]

Free market is the way to go. More competition causes lower prices, more hospitals pop up, more doctors pop up, quality goes up because of the competition, insurance companies compete over people who have pre-existing illnesses because of the competition they can't be as picky.

 

Health care companies don't want unhealthy people or claims for that matter.

Pricing can only get as competitive as doctors are willing to do for less....that and cutting administrative costs in Health Care.

I don't see a free market system driving down prices.

[twa]

 

I don't see a free market system driving down prices.

 

 

Well, IF they can force the healthy younguns to pony up it can work.

 

Lazy bums need to get another job,daddy needs a rebuild 

[twa]

Imagine that

 

Top Hospitals Opt Out of Obamacare Americans who sign up for insurance on the state exchanges may not have access to the nation's top hospitals, Watchdog.org reports.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/hospital-of-tomorrow/articles/2013/10/30/top-hospitals-opt-out-of-obamacare

 

Americans who sign up for Obamacare will be getting a big surprise if they expect to access premium health care that may have been previously covered under their personal policies. Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare.

[CHART: Which Top Hospitals Take Your Insurance Under Obamacare?]

"This doesn't surprise me," said Gail Wilensky, Medicare advisor for the second Bush Administration and senior fellow for Project HOPE. "There has been an incredible amount of focus on the premium cost and subsidy, and precious little focus on what you get for your money."

 

 

 

add

 

Heh

 

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-obamacare-health-insurance-rates-increase-too-expensive-20131029,0,1645290.story#axzz2j6lco3nP

When Obamacare comes fully online, it will do wonders to provide healthcare for people who were not eligible for Medicaid but still could not afford health insurance. If this system is going to be sustainable, however, we’re going to need to find a way to get older and wealthier Americans to chip in more. Because, right now, it’s young, middle-class people just outside the subsidy range who are biting the bullet. Young, middle-class people who already bore the highest toll in the recent financial collapse, who have seen our wages sliced and our job prospects dwindle.

You can only ride our backs for so long before we’re going to tell you enough is enough.

 

 

Bend Over

Edited November 1, 2013 by twa

[chipwhich]

Well, IF they can force the healthy younguns to pony up it can work.

 

Lazy bums need to get another job,daddy needs a rebuild 

 

Americans must not understand the "free market" idea.  Doctors aren't lining up to take crappy insurance negotiated rates.

The current system with crappy rates requires doctors to make as many appointments in an hour as to do a quick as possible drive by analysis of their symptoms and then offer a prescription.  Doctors aren't clambering to add insurance companies, they are dropping insurance companies who are a pain in the ass to deal with.  I know some great doctors who are taking on X number of patients at a Y flat rate and not dealing with insurance at all.

Good luck to everyone thinking the free market will drive down prices and make doctors want to deal with a pain in the ass insurance company to collect a nickel.  It ain't happening.

What the ACA will get you is doctors who can't get patients and lesser service than you might get otherwise.

Ask any doctor how they feel about dealing with insurance companies and getting paid.  I bet you won't get a stellar response.

 

Oh and as twa says, bend over.

Edited November 1, 2013 by chipwhich

[Larry]

I'm shocked at the number of people in this thread who seem to think that Obamacare stinks, because it has private insurance companies in it.

[twa]

I'm shocked you think they are private companies 

 

 

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-right/103113-677485-truth-of-obamacare-was-kept-from-americans.htm

 

ObamaCare Was Built On Web Of Lies, Paternalism

Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that "if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan. Period."

The cancellations lay bare three pillars of ObamaCare: (1) mendacity, (2) paternalism and (3) subterfuge.

(1) Those letters are irrefutable evidence that Obama's repeated you-keep-your-coverage claim was false.

Why were they sent out? Because ObamaCare renders illegal (with exceedingly narrow "grandfathered" exceptions) the continuation of any insurance plan deemed by Washington regulators not to meet their arbitrary standards for adequacy.

Example: No maternity care? You are terminated.

So a law designed to cover the uninsured is now throwing far more people off their insurance than it can possibly be signing up on the nonfunctioning insurance exchanges.

Indeed, most of the 19 million people with individual insurance will have to find new and likely more expensive coverage. And that doesn't even include the additional millions who are sure to lose their employer-provided coverage.

That's a lot of people. That's a pretty big lie.

But perhaps Obama didn't know. Maybe the bystander president was as surprised by this as he claims to have been by the IRS scandal, the Associated Press and James Rosen phone logs, the failure of the ObamaCare website, the premeditation of the Benghazi attacks, the tapping of Angela Merkel's phone — i.e., the workings of the federal government of which he is the nominal head.

I'm skeptical. It's not as if the ObamaCare plan-dropping is an obscure regulation. It's at the heart of Obama's idea of federally regulated and standardized national health insurance.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-right/103113-677485-truth-of-obamacare-was-kept-from-americans.htm#ixzz2jOGpiLFo 
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

Edited November 1, 2013 by twa

[Bliz]

I've had an application pending with the healthcare.gov site for quite a while now.  Just waiting on the identity verification to be completed.  I originally went on mostly out of curiosity for myself, to see what the plans looked like, but now have the dual purpose that my employer (under 50 employees) wants to use my profile so they can submit a SHOP application and see what is available to them. 

 

But it's been since Oct. 10 that they've been working on verifying my identity, so I clicked for the online helpdesk to see what was up.  Someone was on with me in about 1 minute.  But they had no info.  Told me to call the number, give the application number and see what was taking so long. 

 

Okay, called the number.  Again, someone was on with me pretty much immediately,  But she didn't ask me for the application number or anything.  Just said there was a huge backlog and they were trying to work through it and sorry it's taking so long.  Even though it's been since Oct 10, I asked?  She didn't seem phased by the date.  I guess that level of delay is consistent with what they're seeing right now.

 

So, good marks to the customer service for being available to talk to me with virtually no wait time, both online and on phone.  But the delay in the identity verification is very frustrating.  No timetable for when they will complete the identity verification is very frustrating.

Edited November 1, 2013 by Bliz

[Elessar78]

Watching a Baltimore MD WJZ 13 news channel for tonights news.  A waitress at TT Diner said she went onto HealthCare.gov to sign up.  Her quote was $300+ per month with a $20,000 deductible.

Sticker shock.

The $20,000 deductible doesn't sound correct but this isn't FoxNews or a Republican TV station.

 

Welcome to the ACA.

It's Baltimore, "The Home of Homicides", hence the high deductible.

[twa]

 

So, good marks to the customer service for being available to talk to me with virtually no wait time, both online and on phone.  But the delay in the identity verification is very frustrating.  No timetable for when they will complete the identity verification is very frustrating.

 

Are you sure you are who you say you are?

[chipwhich]

Are you sure you are who you say you are?

 

If it's anything like dealing with Medicare customer support line, it should get really interesting  

[twa]

If it's anything like dealing with Medicare customer support line, it should get really interesting

 

It's not like they are saying he is dead.....yet 

[ABQCOWBOY]

I imagine it will be like the VA but worse.  It's a supply and demand thing. 

[Gallen5862]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/senate-dems-supported-obamacare-rule-leading-cancelled-insurance_765706.html

 

 

Senate Dems Supported Obamacare Rule Leading to Cancelled Insurance

 

Senate Democrats, including those up for reelection in 2014, voted three years ago against removing a grandfather rule from Obamacare. Because that rule remains in the law, insurance companies are being forced to cancel policies that don't comply with the Obamacare regulations. CNN's Chris Frates reports: 

 

Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out.

 

In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it....

On a party line vote, Democrats killed the resolution, which could come back to haunt vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year.

Edited November 1, 2013 by Gallen5862

[twa]

Appeals court sides with business owners who challenged health care law contraceptive mandate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/appeals-court-sides-business-owners-who-challenged-health-care-laws-contraceptive-mandate/2013/11/01/bd16d382-430d-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html

[DaGoonie55]

Sorry, but if you have to pay 32 dollars a day, you have to do payroll deductions to the HSA and refund yourself otherwise you are paying for the drugs post tax...which doesn't make sense to you financially.

 

I switched to a high deductible plan a few years ago...but I fund my employees whole deductible by depositing it on their H.S.A.  I don't remember the specifics but basically Blue Cross Blue Shield raised my rates for the non high deductible plan so much that it was cheaper to fully fund deductibles and pay insurance.  It's only going to get worse.

 

I offer both HMO and PPO to my employees.  PPO adds a cost to the employee.

The only way I would suck it up and just take this is if my employer paid the deductible.  And of course they won't.

 

Granted, our corporation is multinational and has upwards of 50,000 employees (9.2 billion in revenue last year and on pace for 10.6 this year) - but this is just a profit adjustment in my eyes.  My section of 8 employees - we are a small team that deploys to where the customer is and gets the seemingly impossible done for the Army- are all ready to walk away and leave this company behind us.  We are all getting bent over.  The larger employee force at where I work (250+) are calling for unionization.  It's getting ugly.

 

Our main gripe isn't health insurance, but it is the proverbial straw  that is breaking the backs of the men and women that get it done.

 

I'll quit posting about this - but it almost seems criminal.  I'm fed up.

[chipwhich]

The only way I would suck it up and just take this is if my employer paid the deductible.  And of course they won't.

 

Granted, our corporation is multinational and has upwards of 50,000 employees (9.2 billion in revenue last year and on pace for 10.6 this year) - but this is just a profit adjustment in my eyes.  My section of 8 employees - we are a small team that deploys to where the customer is and gets the seemingly impossible done for the Army- are all ready to walk away and leave this company behind us.  We are all getting bent over.  The larger employee force at where I work (250+) are calling for unionization.  It's getting ugly.

 

Our main gripe isn't health insurance, but it is the proverbial straw  that is breaking the backs of the men and women that get it done.

 

I'll quit posting about this - but it almost seems criminal.  I'm fed up.

 

Well one of the biggest expenses in running a business of white collar professionals is health care.  It may seem criminal, but I would say it seems criminal how the health care costs are skyrocketing.  If you saw the number your company was facing had they not switched to a high deductible plan you might be shocked.  With my little 80 person company this year, had I not made a change, my health insurance costs were going up over $100,000.

[DaGoonie55]

Well one of the biggest expenses in running a business of white collar professionals is health care.  It may seem criminal, but I would say it seems criminal how the health care costs are skyrocketing.  If you saw the number your company was facing had they not switched to a high deductible plan you might be shocked.  With my little 80 person company this year, had I not made a change, my health insurance costs were going up over $100,000.

 

Holy smokes. 

[Jumbo]

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20131103/US-Health-Overhaul-Angst/

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Now is when Americans start figuring out that President Barack Obama's health care law goes beyond political talk, and really does affect them and people they know.

 

With a cranky federal website complicating access to new coverage and some consumers being notified their existing plans are going away, the potential for winners and losers is creating anxiety and confusion.

 

"I've had questions like, 'Are they going to put me in jail if I don't buy insurance? Because nobody will sell it to me,'" said Bonnie Burns, a longtime community-level insurance counselor from California. "We have family members who are violently opposed to 'Obamacare' and they are on Medicaid — they don't understand that they're already covered by taxpayer benefits."

 

And then there is a young man with lupus who would have never been insurable," Burns continued. "He is on his parents' plan and he'll be able to buy his own coverage. They are very relieved."

 

A poll just out from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation documents shifts in the country in the month since insurance sign-ups began.

 

Fifty-five percent now say they have enough information to understand the law's impact on their family, up 8 percentage points in just one month. Part of the reason is that advertising about how to get coverage is beginning to register.

 

"The law is getting more and more real for people," said Drew Altman, the foundation's president. "A lot of this will turn on whether there's a perception that there have been more winners than losers. ... It's not whether an expert thinks something is a better insurance policy, it's whether people perceive it that way."

 

A look at three groups impacted by the law's rollout:

 

 

 

much more at link

[chipwhich]

Thanks for the article Jumbo, it was a fair writeup until I read this quote.  It is so idiotic it makes the whole article worthless:

 

"What the Affordable Care Act did was give companies a very convenient excuse to say 'Oh, gosh, we really have to get serious about insurance costs,'" said Paul Keckley, an independent health benefits consultant. "I think there's a bit of a bob and weave. The ACA was a convenient excuse for doing what (corporate) human resources departments have been calculating to do for years."

 

Insurance costs for company are comparable to what Social Security is to our Government.  A huge expense which has been getting out of control.  The ACA isn't a convenient excuse for anything, employers have been serious about insurance costs.  If you don't manage your insurance costs you will lose money in your business.  You know businesses must manage expenses.

The simple truth is Obamacare's impact probably will really be known not next years renewal (a lot of people may not even know they have to renew each year at the new insurance rates) but at the second years renewal.  It will get a number of Americans initially in these crappy high deductible plans, eventually have them considering the high costs of platinum plans to avoid the issues with high deductible insurance.

In 2 years we will also see the true cost of Obamacare to our Federal Government.  Just in time for our next presidential election.

Should be fun.