Quit projecting your sexual fantasies on others. Well, partial fantasy. I'm guessing we'd both have to be unconscious for your tastes. Allegedly of course.
Oops, maybe the tax increase is working in a booming economy!
- Thread starter Ostatedchi
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And we do have a room. Living rent free in your head.
The main reason premiums went up astronomically after ACA (irrefutable unless you want to argue with math) boils down to a couple of reasons, IMO.
In a very simplistic view...
It relied on a large chunk of young people to start buying plans vs pay the penalty. The reality was the penalties weren’t stringent enough to motivate consumers to move. It was cheaper to pay the penalty or buy catastrophic coverage only, the percentage miss in the projections was off by a country mile. Without that money coming in, the ACA was doomed. Econ 101.
This won’t be popular for the pubs on the board, but there are some very good parts of the ACA. Most notably, the shift from FFS to value/quality. Nothing will move the needle to better outcomes faster than tying comp to quality. And nothing will decrease overall costs faster than improving overall health of the middle and bottom brackets of the risk pyramid. Hell, it wasn’t until around 2014ish that systems finally started to grasp that ~50% of their overall costs comes from the sickest 5%.
In a very simplistic view...
It relied on a large chunk of young people to start buying plans vs pay the penalty. The reality was the penalties weren’t stringent enough to motivate consumers to move. It was cheaper to pay the penalty or buy catastrophic coverage only, the percentage miss in the projections was off by a country mile. Without that money coming in, the ACA was doomed. Econ 101.
This won’t be popular for the pubs on the board, but there are some very good parts of the ACA. Most notably, the shift from FFS to value/quality. Nothing will move the needle to better outcomes faster than tying comp to quality. And nothing will decrease overall costs faster than improving overall health of the middle and bottom brackets of the risk pyramid. Hell, it wasn’t until around 2014ish that systems finally started to grasp that ~50% of their overall costs comes from the sickest 5%.
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TRUTH. There are great parts of the ACA, but none of them do what the slop was marketed to do. Those provisions could have been passed without the rest of the train wreck.
I'm a firm believer that the preexisting condition sick people should have been placed into the Medicare pool and pay a sliding scale premium into Medicare based on income. That coupled with expansion of the Medicare tax in the higher tax brackets might have given them the coverage they needed and kept them from being so costly in the individual market.
I wanna see the data. The link to the data takes me to a health insurer webpage, not the data. Why does the writer not provide a link to the data? That's unusual. I challenge this:
The data allow us to break down the pre- and post-ACA changes by age, individual vs. family, and plan type. Overall, Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) premiums actually decreased 4.6% in the four years before the ACA reforms came into effect (that is, from 2009 to 2013), but increased 46.4% in the first four years under the ACA. Point-of-Service (POS) premiums decreased 14.9% before the ACA, and increased a whopping 66.2% afterwards. Premiums for the more common Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plans increased 15% in the four years before the ACA, and 66.2% afterwards.
I've been paying premiums, including before the ACA, and it was out of control before and after. It went DOWN like the first year or two, and then I got a 24ish% increase. There is no way my premiums did anything like going DOWN 4 years before the ACA. That's fantasy. I want to see where this insurance outfit got their data. I've tried to find that very data and trace increases over 20 years and couldn't find it.
I'm not sure premiums as a whole were going down prior to the ACA, but the overall rate of annual increases for employer provided plans was on a downward trend. That quoted part specifically references HMOs, so you'd have to look only data for HMOs.
Forgot to add that you also live in Oklahoma, land of heart disease and strokes. Premiums may have decreased in states with overall better health.
The runaway premiums before is what led to the whole ACA to begin with. The premiums were outrageous and I'd sign on for about anything. I have sat down more than once and tried to google up charts of health insurance premium rates over time and struck out. If anybody has that data I'm all ears. I seriously doubt the health insurance industry is going to publish that data and give ammo to their detractors.
I even remember debating Brad. We were going to fight at one point. My point to Brad was that we should just pay a tax and get off the insurance merry-go-round. Still believe it, and still believe there's never gonna be real progress until we go to the pre-health insurance days. I think it was Tricky Dick that let them start generating profit from health insurance.
The data are correct.
I would encourage you to get annual reports for the top 10 payers in the US for every year since 2008 and start slicing.
Good luck. Stay away from windmills tho.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, other than to dispel the absolute myth that average annual premium increases in the years leading up to ACA were as out of control as the years following ACA.
That’s patently false. Period.
As for the rest, it’s a very good time to run a HC consulting company.
That’s patently false. Period.
As for the rest, it’s a very good time to run a HC consulting company.
Your subjective language, "as out of control as the years following" is a little spongy, and I can't speak for anyone else, but absent finding and reconstructing the annual reports of 10 carriers since 2008 (now I'm gonna read 100 annual health insurance reports. There's one work day.) I'm very confident the U.S. was fed up with the premiums before ACA. My premiums were insane and except for a couple of "show" years, they've been out of control every since.
https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/individual-health-insurance-vs-group-health-insurance-2016
Yeah. Its kind of like wearing your high school letter jacket after high school.
I still don't know why anyone would consider it the federal government's job to force down commodity prices
“Spongy” would be you attempting to frame up the years prior to and after ACA in the area of YOY premium growth as equitable. But I do like correcting your mistakes.
Not arguing how fed up anyone was, just the result of ACA on premiums. That was where you planted your flag and you’ve been trying to move it since.
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Where would people get that idea
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
We will never get above that life expectancy without the full force and power of the ACA
Wow, there it is, in detail. There is no way to promote the general welfare without the federal gov't working on health insurance policies
good job!
I guess it is still a mystery why the government would concern itself with people being able to afford healthcare.
And after the last round of big government meddling, it's more accessible and affordable than ever before! Goooooo government!
I think some keys on your keyboard are stuck. Or you're having a stroke. I hope it's the keyboard. Can you hold both arms out in front of you for 10 seconds?
if a health insurance policy is a basic right, and apparently even an obligation, and those that can't afford it according to the gov't should get their insurance subsidized, should those that are unable to afford a firearm be able to get their purchases subsidized?
Apparently the guys that wrote the general welfare cause, since you are using it to defend the federal gov't writing laws that require we all buy health insurance policies and that if we can't afford them, they will be subsidized by other tax payers
Who said anything about the ACA? I thought we were talking about commodity prices?
I thought you were using the general welfare clause to defend the federal gov't involving itself in health insurance policy prices.
is that not true?
It’s funny how the righties on this board soon forget that Republicans, during the Clinton administration, had the idea for a government tax mandate for insurance.
It is helpful to some, it is nothing but a cost to others. So, I would say it is going to be true in some cases and false in others.
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