Obamacare plans for me make no financial sense...I'm confused (New York, house)
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And there is nothing wrong with regulating the insurance market. Especially since the insurance companies have proven to be unable to regulate it themselves. Evidently though, the insurance companies have no problems in being in regulated environments else they wouldn't be so interested into expanding even more into Medicare.
As it turns out my primary care physician is taking new Medicare patients. So are the specialists. I am in Medicare and have not had one problem seeing any doctor. Its true that some doctors in certain areas aren't taking new Medicare patients, OTOH many of those aren't taking any new patients regardless of the type of insurance they might have.
Without Medicare most of the hospitals would fold. And many doctors would be hurting. I do go to specialists (have an appointment next week). When I go, almost everyone in the waiting room is around my age (68) or older. I've noticed that.
Sorta funny about the waiting room I was just wondering that the other day and wonderd if it was the time of day.
That's not how insurance works. It's not a nondiscriminitory risk pool unless the insurer is grossly incompetent at finding a decent actuary. The 20 and 30 somethings won't subsidize the aged and infirm. They'll just go buy their insurance from someone with a decent actuary who can properly price their risk.
Same with car insurance. Just because insurance premiums in NYC for a 25-year-old male with a bad driving record are $5k doesn't mean I'm going to subsidize his rates. I'll just find an insurer who can accurately price my risk.
I did not say that the 25 year old has a bad driving record. The fact of the matter is that a 25 year old male in certain places, most places, in NYC, has to pay a much higher premium than I do simply because of his age and the fact that so many accidents are caused by that age group who are male. You are not going to find an insurer in NYC who can override this extreme difference in his premium over mine - with the same driving record, not with the 25 year old having a bad record.
You are dreaming and wishing for what is not a reality in the insurance industry.
Food for thought auto insurers can still decline someone based on driving record. Health care insurers no longer can and are limited in their ability to price risk in. It will be easier for them to price risk out with higher premiums than in the exchange. All has to play out. Folks need to pay attention to Mississippi and other poor With high numbers of uninsured and no Medicaid expansion.
And he was wrong in the first place. I was not talking about a 25 year old with a BAD record, just a normal one equal to mine at age 60 plus. He must pay far more in premiums than I do simply because of the driving record of the males in the 25 year old age group in NYC. Even if he has a sterling driving record.
Yeah but health insurance for the young used to cost just one-sixth or one-fifth of what health insurance cost for the older. Obamacare included a sneak attack in the generational war, launched against the young! So now the young have to pay one-third what the older pay, or about twice what it would take to actually insure them on a profitable basis.
So here sits the older person, paid-off mortgage, kids raised and grown, within a few years of sucking down Social Security benefits that the young are also getting hosed on, getting the discounts at the movies and restaurants....and the young people struggling to get by in Obama's economy are subsiding the older!
If I were a young Obama voter, the president would have some 'splaining to do.
Let me tell you this: When I was young I paid for the taxes to send other people's kids to 12 years of public school and I never had kids. I paid rent with no deductible for interest in a mortgage and did this for more than 20 years as an adult. I paid a very high car insurance rate, very high, because I lived in a major city where jerky drivers, many of them irresponsible, had terrible accidents or had expensive cars which others routinely stolen. I never tried to even think of closing the government down for all of this! I just paid my bills and went on with my life as a low paid social worker.
The people who complain about paying for health insurance so that most people are fully covered are babies, cry babies. Get a life, I say to them. Get with the program and wake up and realize that now you have health insurance that is going to protect you far more than any cheap health insurance did when you paid the lower rates due to your age. I am sure that for those low rates you did not have catastrophic insurance which Obamacare requires, for example. You should have, but you did not.
As far as the paid off mortgage goes, many old people do not have that because the past 25 years have not been easy in this country economically, and they, like many of my classmates, were helping to pay for their kids or grandkids to go to college. They are not all living high off the hog like you make it out to be. And they do not all have big pensions.
If you have complaints about them making so much or having economic security, why not go after the high rollers who are financing the Republican right wingers? They are the ones who are living off the corporate welfare dole.
You know. I was happy when I found out about ACA. I though to myself "heck, now I can afford health insurance, YES". Today, I dont feel the same. IIhave a great opportunity to start working for the police department and actually make a decent paycheck. Then, I will be able to afford health insurance.
Currently though, I am part time. Im 34 and make roughly $23,000 a year. Oh, I also live from paycheck to paycheck. Im working on bettering my situation. But if I dont get this job, I will be facing a grim understanding; how the heck am I to afford $150 a month for the very basic bronze plan when im barely scraping by as is? I was able to get on the healthcare.gov website and look up a plan with the paultry $43 a month in subsidaries. I just dont understand. I make $23K yearly and barely receive a subsidy. Oh well, guess its better than nothing right?
That is he nature of pools; they are one size fits all to spread the risk .Never meant to fit individual needs. In this case its not even that all pay the same price for the same product because of subsidizes paid thru taxes and fees besides your premiums. True cost will be your premiums then what portion you pay in those taxes and fees. if they apply.
Kate, many don't have the room in their budget to be able to pay the monthly costs. They already up to the edge. When the law was passed it was expected the country would be in a much more improved economy right now.
lmao if these politicians thought we would be in a much improved economy than we have now they are even dumber than I thought.
If one has employer sponsored health care, chances are pretty good that a chunk is being taken out of your take home pay to cover it.
I've heard the argument of "well, it's just taken out automatically so that's different" as if you aren't somehow still paying out of pocket.
That odd bit of thinking, coupled with the fact that most employer plans are virtually identical with regard to deductibles, etc. gives these arguments a most surreal aspect for me.
It shows that people likely never really gave much thought to the value of their employer sponsored plans and just what it is/was those magic payroll deductions pay for.
Funny how things change when those payments become real.
you're right people don't often think about their benefits as being a part of their income even though they really are because they never actually see the money come and go.
one difference however is if you buy health insurance you are doing so with after tax income, where as when you receive health insurance through work you aren't taxed on its cost.
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