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The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon

healthcare.gov

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Re: The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon

#51

Post by yummyfajitas »

jjoonathan wrote: post #50
yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conflating the overall cost with the per-year cost. Per-year, fatties and smokers cost more. Since insurance premiums are also paid on a per-year basis, per-year is the relevant point of comparison. Of course, in a single payer system which only receives payments from people while they work, it would in fact be beneficial to induce people to die earlier.

> You are conflating the overall cost with the per-year cost. Performing the division to approximate yearly costs from the source I linked does not support your point. Obese people may have had the highest costs, but not the highest average yearly costs. In a single payer health system, the "insurance provider" sees ROI from peoples' productivity, meaning the single payer system has incentive to keep people healthy e…

I stand corrected. I misinterpreted this sentence: "The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs." I should indeed have done the math.

You are correct that for long term health insurance contracts (i.e., contracts which are guaranteed to cover people past the age of 56 at a fixed cost), fatties and smokers should pay less.

In a single payer health system, the "insurance provider" sees ROI from peoples' productivity, meaning the single payer system has incentive to keep people healthy even if it costs more.

This makes no sense. According to your link, the healthy people cost more due to medical costs incurred during their unproductive years. There is no incentive for a single payer system to keep people alive in their unproductive years.

Re: The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon

#52

Post by bcoates »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #20
bcoates wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a cheap shot: This website created in compliance with a law designed to increase insurance industry control over medicine is overpriced, therefore we should remove one of the last remaining restrictions on that control.

How is prohibiting competition a restriction on insurance industry control over medicine? That's like saying medallion cabs have too much control on taxi service, therefore we should not remove restrictions which keep Uber and other competitors out of the market.

The only "prohibiting competition" rule is that currently insurance companies have to create plans for each state they want to operate in, and those plans have to follow the laws in that state.

Since not every state insurance commissioner is captured by the insurance industry, this is a big problem for them so they're heavily lobbying the feds to create a situation where insurance policies are regulated by the state the company is based out of.

This will let them set up an operation like corporate governance and consumer lending have, where one of the most corrupt states like Delaware sets up rules that let insurance companies do whatever they want.

Re: The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon

#53

Post by sentenza »

tosseraccount wrote: post #48
yequalsx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't change that and this is a good thing. Part of being in a society is shared responsibilities. I subsidize the education of other peoples' children by paying taxes that fund k-12 education. I have no children of my own. But I'm not being cheated because a society that has universal, free k-12 education is better than one that doesn't. Similarly a society that has free, universal healthcare is better than on…

U.S. spends around 40% more GDP per year on healthcare ... "evidence" or speculation?

How about fact? If I may be so free to cite Wikipedia: The EU country that has the hightest per GDP expenses on health care, according to [1] is The Netherlands with 12.0% compared to the US with 17.6. EVERY other EU country has a lower percentage.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal...

Re: The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon

#54

Post by JPKab »

300bps wrote: post #14
mjn wrote: post #10

This looks a lot nicer than the websites I had to deal with last time I bought individual insurance on the open market (2010). Will be interested to see how the presentation of plan information is when it becomes available, since that was the second-worst part of the old experience [1]. Hopefully they'll get it right and lay out the choices in some kind of understandable and transparent way. [1] The worst part was th…

It looks nicer than my.company's website for open enrollment. Since Obamacare was enacted, I've gone from a PPO that pays for just about everything to a HDHP that only pays for catastrophic things. But at least the price of the coverage only went up 28% for the vastly inferior coverage. Two of the provisions that are in place already that really raised the cost of the vast majority's health bills are having to cover…

Yeah, the company that I worked at went from PPO to HDHP in 2008. I guess somehow Obamacare caused that too, despite the fact that Bush was still President. Oh wait, nevermind. My employer was just trying to save themselves money by transferring the 10% per year inflation of health care cost to its employees. It just so happens that every other company that did the same thing in 2009/2010 was able to scapegoat Obamacare for saving themselves money with a move that was always going to be unpopular with employees.

HDHPs were always cheaper for employers than PPOs. Its just that making the shift is hard for a company, because it pisses employees off, and some leave. Many, many companies made the shift when they were able to transfer blame onto a little understood, complex law, despite the fact that the real driver for them doing so was double digit health premium inflation, year after year.

Re: The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon

#55

Post by swamp40 »

muzz wrote: post #32
swamp40 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Group plans were/are always forced to cover pre-existing conditions. It's only if you have a pre-existing condition and no group insurance that you will see your prices drop. This is also exactly what is going to eventually bring down the existing US privatized health system, btw. The accounting doesn't add up when you force a cap on premiums and allow unlimited ~10M treatments. People will pay the yearly fine until…

The markets appear to disagree with your hypothesis. Market valuations of the health insurance companies have zoomed to new highs.

The markets see millions of forced new customers about to come in. A massive gov mandated increase in market cap.

There are two possible outcomes.

1) They find a way to cap the hi-money costs (approvals, delays, mandated procedures that are below today's level of care, etc.)

2) Eat the costs, then cry for a (I'm too big to fail) bailout.

Re: The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon

#56

Post by swamp40 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #46
swamp40 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Group plans were/are always forced to cover pre-existing conditions. It's only if you have a pre-existing condition and no group insurance that you will see your prices drop. This is also exactly what is going to eventually bring down the existing US privatized health system, btw. The accounting doesn't add up when you force a cap on premiums and allow unlimited ~10M treatments. People will pay the yearly fine until…

"monthly incoming way down while claims go thru the roof" Claims wouldn't go through the roof - the availability of "retroactive" insurance wouldn't increase the number of car accidents.

Right now each individual hospital eats and writes off a massive amount of indigent claims. A lot of that is about to be shifted onto the insurance companies.

Also, there are a lot of people out there today who are suffering, but don't have the insurance to pay for their operations, medication, etc.

If it's not life threatening and they aren't on medicare, etc, right now they are unserved.

I hope people don't get the wrong impression that I feel sorry for the insurance companies.

My perspectives are purely from an accounting point of view.

Companies will make their money first.

You can count on that, even if it leaves the average American with a poorer health-care experience than they enjoy today.

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