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Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

nytimes.com

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Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#51

Post by ghaff »

dibujante wrote: post #25
methodover wrote: post #17

> But plenty of healthy holdouts remain, and their resistance helps explain why insurers are worried about the financial viability of the exchanges over time. They say they sorely need more healthy customers to balance out the costs of covering the sicker, older people who have flocked to exchange plans. Ah, the tragedy of the commons at work. Healthy people don't buy insurance because it's too expensive. Insurance i…

As a Canadian, I am astonished at how expensive even the cheapest of these plans are. My monthly healthcare cost amounts to $178, once you factor in the taxes I pay that go to healthcare. That's cheaper than any of the plans in this article. How do people find these prices bearable?

That's because, at least in part, the costs in Canada and much of Western Europe are paid for indirectly through other taxes.

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#52

Post by msandford »

yetanotherone wrote: post #44
tomohawk wrote: post #32

Inevitable result of thinking that adding even more government intervention would result in better, cheaper plans. If they were really interested in making better, cheaper plans, they would roll back most of the ACA, eliminate the restrictions on buying across state lines (actually allow competition), and transfer the tax incentives for getting insurance from employers to employees. Basically, all they had to do to m…

It's a little offtopic, but this reminds me of Lessig's "the corrupting influence of money is the first problem facing this nation. That unless we solve this problem, we won’t solve anything else." In my opinion the public option wouldn't have cost us much as a nation on the whole, and could have possibly worked out to great advantage, but was not going to happen because health insurance companies are too powerful fo…

> In my opinion the public option wouldn't have cost us much as a nation on the whole, and could have possibly worked out to great advantage, but was not going to happen because health insurance companies are too powerful for that sort of thing to get through.

The only public option that would have gone through would have been one that the insurance companies blessed, whereby there were the mediators of all the payments. Which is basically what we got.

If you solve the money problem you can solve a lot of problems, but until you solve the money problem few or none of the rest of these problems will get solved.

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#53

Post by dibujante »

ghaff wrote: post #51
dibujante wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian, I am astonished at how expensive even the cheapest of these plans are. My monthly healthcare cost amounts to $178, once you factor in the taxes I pay that go to healthcare. That's cheaper than any of the plans in this article. How do people find these prices bearable?

That's because, at least in part, the costs in Canada and much of Western Europe are paid for indirectly through other taxes.

No, I factored taxes into my calculation. I am aware that "free" healthcare is not "free" unless you do not pay tax.

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#54

Post by graeme »

I'm a Canadian. I'm curious to know what it would cost to match my level of coverage in the US.

1. Public medical care. Good care, normally easy to see a doctor. Excellent quality. Can use this as much as you need. 2. Occasional use of the parallel private billing system. Costs less than $300 Canadian to see a specialist. 3. Private coverage for paramedical claims (Physio, massage, drug plan, dental, vision, etc.). Pretty comprehensive. Costs about $100 Canadian a month.

I work for myself. Is it even possible to replicate such a plan without employer coverage? What would it cost?

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#55

Post by [deleted] »

Analemma_ wrote: post #15
CrowFly wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. I think the stories from people who are actually trying to use the ACA should bear a lot of weight.

No, they shouldn't. "The plural of anecdote is not data": of course you can go around cherry-picking people who are unhappy with the ACA; health care is extremely complicated, no solution was ever going to be perfect, and this law in particular attracts people with an axe to grind. But I can find just as many anecdotes of people who are a lot better off under the ACA. Stories are pointless; the only effective measure…

[deleted]

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#56

Post by narrator »

x5n1 wrote: post #41
jhulla wrote: post #4

Personal experience with ACA: As of 2016, we're onto our 3rd insurer. Each prior one has dropped our local doctors, physicians groups and hospital. With each insurance change, our deductible has gone up, our premium has increased and our co-pay, co-insurance has increased. In effect, our ACA plan has become an extremely expensive catastrophic insurance plan.

And so it goes, National Healthcare like Britain or Canada is what America needs and what the medical establishment does not want. But somehow I think America would screw that up as well.

I think it would bankrupt the government if they did single payer without price caps on drugs. We already spend about double, as a percent of GDP, on health care compared to other countries. Getting the costs under control is the only way to approach reforming health care that's going to work.

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#57

Post by ghaff »

dibujante wrote: post #53
ghaff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because, at least in part, the costs in Canada and much of Western Europe are paid for indirectly through other taxes.

No, I factored taxes into my calculation. I am aware that "free" healthcare is not "free" unless you do not pay tax.

According to this [1] which is fairly consistent with other things I've read, US costs are maybe 25% higher than in Canada. What that means is debatable in the context of waiting times, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_s...

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#58

Post by xirdstl »

pmorici wrote: post #10
dpweb wrote: post #5

I'm against Obamacare, but if I was for it, I would peg the penalties at 2x the avg basic exchange coverage price. Also, people with high deductibles should make sure you take advantage of tax benefits, HSA for instance. The $6000 deductible may really only be a $4800 deductible once you figure in the tax deduction. If you're talking Obamacare coverage being 20% higher than the penality (I'm assuming the penalty is n…

My current plan has an has an HSA component but the company that administrates the account, BenefitWallet, has some fine print in the account agreement that they charge an account fee for balances less than several thousand dollars. Realistically I only spend several hundred dollars per year on healthcare stuff so I don't think it is to my advantage to lock up that much money in a non-interest bearing account or pay…

As others have said, I think you can use another company. Also, some companies will allow you to invest any money above a certain balance. In my HSA, I can invest anything about $2000 (or maybe $2500?) into a number of different mutual funds. That plus tax benefits plus tax free growth is a pretty good deal.

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#59

Post by imh »

Some people don't get insurance because the high deductibles mean they probably won't get any benefit. I think an even scarier effect is that I personally don't go to the doctor unless I really, really need to because of those same high deductibles (and the high cost of time off of work). Preventative care is expensive!

Re: Many See I.R.S. Penalties as More Affordable Than Health Insurance

#60

Post by methodover »

privong wrote: post #49
methodover wrote: post #17

> But plenty of healthy holdouts remain, and their resistance helps explain why insurers are worried about the financial viability of the exchanges over time. They say they sorely need more healthy customers to balance out the costs of covering the sicker, older people who have flocked to exchange plans. Ah, the tragedy of the commons at work. Healthy people don't buy insurance because it's too expensive. Insurance i…

> It's a terrible feedback loop, one which the IRS penalties were designed to solve. But it shouldn't be surprising that the IRS penalties (in current form) could not solve this. This eventuality was predicted before the law was passed in the Senate (e.g., [0]). It seems fairly obvious that this would happen unless fines are somehow pegged to the cheapest insurance rates (as dpweb notes in this same HN story[1]). [0]…

Wouldn't the problem with that be, insurance companies would have an incentive to raise prices as high as they can, knowing that the public would basically be required by law to pay them (or an equivalent penalty)?

That incentive sounds pretty terrible for the public. Great for insurance companies though.

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