Health Insurance and Ignorance

[hypo]

I was about to comment on this on Facebook and then remembered that is against my rule of public arguments about politics. So what better place to post than here with my friends.

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This guy didn't even know what he had or what he is talking about. I have the same plan he had and they aren't cancelling it here in Maryland (Or at least not yet, I have checked and it will still be vaild thru 8/31/14). His annual out of pocket on a $1,500 High Deductible plan would have been $3,000 not $1,500. It is always twice your deductible. (come on know your plan, especially if you are going to try and act like you know what you are talking about). And if he had BlueCross BlueSheild he was covered for the mental illness and substance abuse as well that is normally a standard. Sucks that he has to pay more for the plan "assigned to him", maybe he should shop around for a better plan they are still out there. And unless Nebraska is doing something completely different than the rest of the USA you get to choose your plan (State offered or Federal offered depending on if your state has comeup with their own plan or have chossen to adopt the federal plan), it's not assigned to you. Also nothing is stopping him from going to e-healthinsurance or contacting a broker and finding a new health insurance. Private Health Insurance Companies haven't gone away.

And another thing Health Insurance Companies drop people all the time and people have to go look for new insurance, doesn't even have to do with Obamacare. They can drop you for using your health insurance too much in a year, they can drop you for having cancer treatments. If anything it will be harder for health insurance companies to drop you after the first of the year. That is why some of them are doing it now. It's not Affordable Care Act (ACA) that is forcing BCBS to drop him they are doing it because they are doing while they still can do it legally. This is why they (Obama/Dems) are trying to regulate health insurance to make it so people don't go broke/bankrupt or go untreated because they have no insurance.

And *Cuss* TED CRUZ reading Dr Seuss on the Senate floor isn't Filibustering, it's just stunting. I am really surprised they let him do it. filibustering is suppsoed to be relevent to the topic. All he really had to do was open up a telephone book and start reading out names of his constituents that he is working for or a long disertation on why he beleives the ACA is wrong or hell read the whole ACA from start to finish with comments on each line. He is not farthing any cause or helping provide an alternative he is just being an OVERPAID ASSHAT that is trying to get noticed by the media.

What I feel the Republicans should be doing is work to reform the affordable care act and stop trying for the 43rd time to appeal it and replace it with a slightly different but similar plan. This is no different than Maryland refusing to have Slot Machine Gambling under Ehrlich just to turn around and say it was okay under O'Malley. They just want to say their guy got it done. Doesn't matter the outcome as long as they did it or it was their idea first.

That being said I am not saying I support the Affordable Care Act in its current structure, it needs work. But fix IT don't threaten to shut down our Gov't and cause us to go back in to a recession, that we still aren't out of yet. STOP BITCHING CONGRESS AND DO YOUR FUCKING JOB.

UGH RANT OVER.

Comments not directed at you Dan. Just saw your post and thought better to discuss here.

[hypo]

I am not going to amend my previous post. but after further review of the guys letter (if it is real) it does say that his total out of pocket is the same as his deductible, which I have never seen on a High Deductible Plan. Also BCBS of Nebraska is a lot different than BCBS of Maryland. mental health wasn't covered like the Maryland Plan already did. So let me be the first to say I was wrong to say he didn't know his plan. Doesn't change the fact he can still shop around.

[Fritz]

There is tons of intentional misinformation out there about the upcoming ACA implementation, so I don't really blame consumers for being annoyed, scared, or angry. I'm not sure I really believe that guy because he's obviously trying to make a political point. In general premiums and monthly fees are going down. However, that's just the average and there definitely are groups of people that are seeing increases. I wish I could find the article again, but I saw a CNN study that showed young single men are the most likely to see an increase while the elderly are most likely to see a significant decrease. This is mainly because of a provision in the law that only allows health insurers to charge the elderly three times what they do everyone else. This makes the elderly prices come way down and the prices for the young and health go up a bit.

Things also vary considerably state by state. Oddly enough it also tends to follow red state/blue state lines. Red states are generally seeing bigger increases than blue states. Why? Many blue states already required insurers to cover things that ACA makes universal, such as mental health. As such, blue state insurers don't have to add many new benefits. That's why average New York rates are quite literally dropping by half. With more people being required to pay into health insurance, and health insurers being forced by law to use 80% of their incoming revenue on actual insurance payouts (hands down my favorite provision since it stops insurers from denying coverage purely to increase profits), premiums in states that already required more coverage have no choice but to significantly drop rates. Maryland should see a very simliar trend.

[MorGrendel]

Much like Erlich, Obamacare will eventually be repealed. Of course it will only be in small incomplete parts, that will never actually lose funding, and will be replaced by a new but arbitrarily like-same law. Oh, but what a stirring victory it will be . . . <sarcasm>

I'll only add to Fritz's comment about misinformation. Politicians and there benifactors are just now realizing that there is no real backlash to misinformation, and are embracing the old addage that "there's no such thing as bad PR, because now they are talking about us (and that's what we wanted)". I expect that we will be innodated with "true stories" on social media that "news organizations" will pick up and run as "news", and when it is shown to be bunk, they will simple rebrand it as a "necessary dialogue the country needs to have". Worse, the news networks have decided that in the absence of facts (mostly because employing journalist is too expensive), they will just report anything that comes to mind. They will caveat their blatant lies with the cover of "prelliminary conclusions/findings" or "outside research" (AKA they checked Twitter). And they will laugh as they see their ratings soar, even as nothing they said turns out to be correct.

[Fritz]

You nailed it Jeff. Just look at CNN's take on all the information they got wrong about Boston and the Naval Yard shooting. They simply said 'well hey we got the best ratings we've ever had, so we must be doing it right.' This is why I avoid cable news. It's a den of utter stupidity.

[MorGrendel]

True, but it's not just cable news.

[Fritz]

True, but it's not just cable news.

Not by a long shot. Political campaigns are obviously the worst offenders. I just find cable news has become the nexus for that brings all the stupid together.

[MorGrendel]

Ha, I just sat in on a "marketing" conference about "marketing content" AKA "news jacking".

[boagrius]

I don't normally post on this as I'll lose my fucking mind but i just read this and i can't find my mind...

http://news.msn.com/us/sticker-shock-of ... cellation/

[Fritz]

I really wish we had more hard statistics on this, but the article itself says that only 5% of the current insurance market is made up of people who buy individual insurance. How much of that 5% have these bare bones plans? My guess would be most, but even then, we're talking about what is statistically a small part of the population. I don't want to be insensitive, but you simply can't make everyone happy. Just 5 years ago people were raging about life time insurance caps, pregnancy being termed a "pre-existing condition," and all the other coverage loopholes that insurers are now being forced to cover. Well, when you go with a market based multi payer system and not a single payer government run system, the result was going to be higher premiums for somebody. Don't forget, the ACA was modeled on a Heritage Foundation Plan first proposed as an alternative to HillaryCare. It is a fairly conservative plan that most liberals feel does not go far enough. I find it hilarious that the conservative attitude to universal health coverage has gone from 'here's a market-based way to do it' during the Clinton days to completely rejecting the notion that there is even a problem today. The left wanted a government run system akin to what Canada has, but the Obama administration tried to go with a plan they felt would be more accepted (joke's on them I suppose).

The outrage we're seeing, however, is completely justified. I don't know if Obama was intentionally misleading, or just didn't think it all the way through (my guess is the latter considering how this White House stumbles from crisis to crisis), but we were told everyone who already had insurance would be unaffected by the ACA. Well, clearly 5% of the population has been dramatically affected. There are lots of things to like about the ACA in my opinion, but it was a law that could have used more bi-partisan input. You can blame Obama's win-take-all attitude after the '08 election or the Republicans total unyielding stonewalling, but either way the bi-partisanship needed for something as monumental as these kinds of changes to the American health care system was not there. I would say they could come together and fix the problems with the law, but that would be too optimistic of a goal for this Congress.

[MorGrendel]

Cigna #1 in drops.
Cigna my company's new healthcare vendor of choice.
Coincidence? Yup.

Quick scan of Wikipedia:
In 2002, it was alleged in violation of the Securities Exchange Act for earnings manipulation. Its common stock price plummeted significantly as a result.
According to Consumer Affairs, Cigna currently has the lowest possible rating (1-star/poor) for customer satisfaction.[12]
The CNA has determined that Cigna denies roughly 39.6% of all claims (compared to competitors such as Aetna who denied about 5.9% of all claims in the same time frame).[13]
The UK newspaper Guardian in their "Esc and Ctrl" videoblog about control of Internet by corporations documented an incident of Nataline Sarkisyan and former vice president of Cigna talked about astroturfing, the practice of creating fake blogs by interested groups e.g. health insurance companies to push claims that are profitable for said company into media, e.g. dismissing universal health care.

Let's not fool ourselves, the bad guys will win, and I'll get screwed again.

[MorGrendel]

Here's the problem: Healthcare need to be detatched from employment. It is a broken system that when it worked at its best, it was ONLY a loophole for Unions that were unable to raise there wage due to government restriction.

This Carrot and Stick approach can not work:
If Govt insurance is better, people will buy it.
If not, but we we as a society have decided that everyone is required to have/pay for health insurance; fine but be sure its something that people want and understand.
Or if it is unpopular but necessary social change, like the end of slavery, then call it what it is and don't shirk when it comes to meteing out penalties.

But when we don't talk about the lack of Doctor's, or that nurses, DOs, and PAs are asked to perform tasks beyond their training (let alone ethical considerations). And we don't discuss lowering the Bond or the trend towards out-of-state monitoring, no real change can be realized. It all about making sure donors are happy, not what is best for the patients.

[MorGrendel]

I really wish we had more hard statistics on this . . .

http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012 ... s/ib.shtml

You only have to make it to the first picture (Figure 1: Sources of Insurance Coverage, 2011) to see that the percents don't hold much weight in a debate. One might argue that 10% (70% of 10% depending where you look) lose thier coverage to help the 15%, but the reality may be that if people don't sign up and take the penalty instead, we may soon have 25% uninsured. Good News, only 29 more years until my medicade kicks in.

But at least Obama says he's sorry . . . I guess he was blind to the HSS recommendation.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11 ... snhp&pos=1

Article says 80% of Americans get their healthcare from their employer, medicade, medicare, but I find that "percentage" incorrect, since if we visit the above figure, we see the numbers are NOT based on 100% of Americans. Just the blind leading the blind. Damn, I wasn't going to pontificate.

“What we're talking about here is the five percent in the country who currently purchase insurance on the individual market,” Carney said last month. “And that market has been like the Wild West. It has been under-regulated, it is the place where Americans have most keenly felt the challenges posed by the insurance system in this country.”

Except this percentage of people paid a fair price for the services rendered. Was this change brought about by fraud? Was someone cheating? No, so lets avoid the derisions towards the "wild west". Don't blame the consumer or the provider on this. The people involved in passing this bill should have been aware of its ramifications, or else they are negligent.

[MorGrendel]

Co-insurance is your share of the costs of a covered service

If I'm paying an additional share of the cost, how is that insurance? Sounds like Orwellian Doublethink to me.

[Berserker]

"Coinsurance is the term used by health insurance companies to refer to the amount that you are required to pay for a medical claim, apart from any co-payments or deductible. For example, if your health insurance plan has a 20% coinsurance requirement (and does not have any additional co-payment or deductible requirements), then a $100 medical bill would cost you $20, and the insurance company would pay the remaining $80." link

Not sure why you think that's double paying. Isn't that how all health plans are in the US? Some cover 80% hospital stay, some 50%, some 100%. And the cost of the plans are set accordingly.