Obamacare: Where's the "explosion" of premium rates?
invite response
2013 Aug 20, 4:33pm 4,567 views 11 comments
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Tenpoundbass
2013 Aug 20, 11:39pm
Are you that dim or are you just being obtuse?
5%, 9% or even 9% of 12K is still a lot of fucking money.
I'm sure it doesn't mean anything to "Read it latter" Pelosi, who is gaming the insurance companies with her investment portfolio, but for everyone else. That equates to over $4,000 in just 4 or 5 years.
If $4,000 isn't shit to you, then feel free to send me a $4,000 check.
But you're on track to get it all subsidized(or so you think) so it really doesn't matter to you.
finehoe
2013 Aug 21, 12:44am
Rise in premiums is lowest in 2 decades
Ask any health economist and they’ll no doubt tell you that health care cost growth is slowing, growing at a low, unprecedented rate.
They can point to the National Health Expenditures report, which shows health care costs now growing at the same rate as the rest of the economy. Or, they can pull up new data out Tuesday from the Kaiser Family Foundation, showing that premiums grew 4 percent in 2013. That’s way lower than growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Ask any American about what direction health costs are moving, and you’ll likely get a completely different story. Preliminary results for a forthcoming Kaiser Family Foundation poll show that most Americans think that health care costs are actually growing faster than usual right now. Fewer than 10 percent say the growth is slowing down.
“We have a very moderate increase this year, but premiums go up each year,†Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman says. “People see what they pay for their premium going up and perhaps more forms of cost-sharing. We’ve been seeing a quiet revolution from more comprehensive coverage to less.â€
Altman said that preliminary results from his group’s survey show that 54 percent of Americans think health care costs are growing faster than average. “A tiny number said they were growing slower,†he says. “I think that’s because, if we look at this as a long term trend, health care costs have increased in excess of wages and inflation.â€
The 4 percent increase in 2013, for example, still more than doubles growth in inflation (1.1 percent) and wage growth (1.8 percent) over the same time period.
It’s also important to look beyond premiums, to the other health care costs that Americans may incur in paying for health coverage. While monthly premiums are growing slower, the Kaiser Family Foundation data shows a steady rise in deductibles, the amount that an insurance costumer must pay out-of-pocket before their benefits kick in.
This is especially true among businesses with fewer than 200 employees, where 58 percent of workers are enrolled in plans with a deductible over $1,000, up from 49 percent in 2012. At companies of all sizes, the number of workers in high deductible plans has more than tripled since 2006.
Moderate premium growth, then, may not seem as significant in the context of higher deductibles.
These trends, Altman and others say, are likely to continue under Obamacare, where millions of consumers will price shop for health coverage and compare premiums for different plans. The cheapest premium plans will likely have significant deductibles, as a way of holding overall costs down.
Already the new marketplaces have bids from plans with relatively high deductibles, especially in the bronze and silver categories, which offer less robust coverage and are the options that consumers are most likely to purchase.
And this actually aligns with a more conservative view of how health insurance ought to work, with coverage that, as health wonks describe it, puts “more skin in the game,†making the subscriber responsible for a greater part of his or her own health care costs.
“The vision of health insurance they’ve advocated is the vision of health insurance which is generally coming to predominate the marketplaces,†Altman says.
That helps explain why, even if the health care cost slowdown continues (and that’s a big if), it might not necessarily be felt by consumers. If we’re shifting to an insurance model where the consumer pays a bigger chunk of the bill, health care costs could keep growing slowly–without insurance subscribers ever noticing.
Homeboy
2013 Aug 21, 4:40am
Are you that dim or are you just being obtuse?
5%, 9% or even 9% of 12K is still a lot of fucking money.
I'm sure it doesn't mean anything to "Read it latter" Pelosi, who is gaming the insurance companies with her investment portfolio, but for everyone else. That equates to over $4,000 in just 4 or 5 years.If $4,000 isn't shit to you, then feel free to send me a $4,000 check.
But you're on track to get it all subsidized(or so you think) so it really doesn't matter to you.
I don't understand your point. Do you want to go back to the previous system, where rates were rising FASTER?
Plus, if you're bitching about $12K a year for your family of four, and claiming you won't get a subsidy, then you're making North of $90K, right? 5% of $12,000 is $600. Pay your own $600; you can afford it; you're just a tightwad. Fuck you.
Tenpoundbass
2013 Aug 21, 4:45am
Fist of all when a market is supporting it, be it artificially(through mandates) or just pure speculation due to easy access.
That is the ONLY time you'll ever find a rule of thumb that something has to inflate at set rate. be it 3% or 15% YOY.
Take all of the forced initiative away, and we find that there's no such thing as inflation. In fact, it's free to to go back down to 1999 levels. (Housing bubble anyone?)
Kill ACA and Insurance would cost $750 for a family of 4 over night.
Take all investor incentive out of insurance and it would go even lower.
Healthcare costs in the US are out of control because we have both speculation and mandated forced participation.
So please stop with the charts, while you look smart now, you'll just look plain silly when the market has to support your claims on its own.
finehoe
2013 Aug 21, 4:52am
Kill ACA and Insurance would cost $750 for a family of 4 over night.
Yeah, because rates were so cheap prior to 2010.
Tenpoundbass
2013 Aug 21, 5:08am
Well the company I worked for at the time only charged $700 a month for premiums. VS $1400. I know I know insurance has been rising at 3% since the dawn of time.
“We have a very moderate increase this year, but premiums go up each year,†Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman says.
We all know, health insurance costs, always only go up.
But why?
And how?
I must have missed the day in indocrination class where they told me id be forced to pony up 500k over the course of adult working life span, for the privilege to be an American.
If health insurance is supposed to be the method by which americans pool their risk, I'm confused as to where these numbers come from? How on Earth could I ever spend 500k on healthcare services, to warrant paying so much in insurance premiums?
Isn't the entire purpose of an insurance policy, to lower your burden of cost, in the unlikely event of a disaster?
curious2
2013 Aug 21, 5:52am
We all know, health insurance costs, always only go up.
But why?
It's a business model, to maximize revenue and power. Obamacare merely accelerated the increases, at a time when (as Homefool's statistics show) they were beginning to slow down, and should otherwise have reversed. The industry was taking all it could, so the increases were slowing, then Obamacare provided a way for them to take even more. It's like the housing sector: prices only ever go up, as long as the government is "helping" homeowners with federally insured loans at artificially low rates, or medical customers with subsidized insurance, or student loan borrowers.
Isn't the entire purpose of an insurance policy, to lower your burden of cost, in the unlikely event of a disaster?
No, the entire purpose is to make money for the people who wrote the policy.
Tenpoundbass
2013 Aug 21, 7:11am
Isn't the entire purpose of an insurance policy, to lower your burden of cost, in the unlikely event of a disaster?
Fuck no! It's so Pelosi can get Rich.
Homeboy
2013 Aug 21, 1:20pm
Well the company I worked for at the time only charged $700 a month for premiums. VS $1400. I know I know insurance has been rising at 3% since the dawn of time.
What part of "rates were rising faster BEFORE Obamacare than they are SINCE Obamacare" didn't you understand? What's the matter? Do facts make you frightened and confused?
Homeboy
2013 Aug 21, 1:28pm
We all know, health insurance costs, always only go up.
But why?
And how?I must have missed the day in indocrination class where they told me id be forced to pony up 500k over the course of adult working life span, for the privilege to be an American.
If health insurance is supposed to be the method by which americans pool their risk, I'm confused as to where these numbers come from? How on Earth could I ever spend 500k on healthcare services, to warrant paying so much in insurance premiums?
Isn't the entire purpose of an insurance policy, to lower your burden of cost, in the unlikely event of a disaster?
Yeah, it sucks. You know what we should do? We should pass a law that says everyone has to have insurance, so everyone is part of the risk pool and we're not subsidizing the uninsured when they go to the ER. Then, we should have websites in every state where you can shop for insurance and make an informed decision about which policy to pick. Then, if people still can't afford insurance, they should get tax credits to help pay for it, based on their income level. Then, we should say that insurance companies can't have more than 20% of their income go to profits and administrative costs, so that 80% is actually spent on healthcare.
Oh wait - We already did that.
One of the things the ACA haters keep barking about is the alleged "out of control" rate hikes we are experiencing. Except we're not. The non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation just released its latest report on insurance costs, and once again, the increase in family insurance rates from year to year is SLOWER than it was before Obamacare.
http://kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2013-section-1/
The average rate increase from 2000-2009 was 9%, while the average rate increase from 2010-2013, after ACA was enacted, was only 5%. Here's a spreadsheet showing the data:
So basically, anyone who says ACA has caused health insurance premiums to skyrocket is a liar.
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