Personally I preferred the previous way of signing up for coverage ... call up a private insurer and sign up? The cost was less too as I wasn't paying for insurance for lazy sally or Joe Schmoe! So for me Obamacare/social medicine forced those who do and work to pay and cover for those who don't. See ya Obamacare(love obama though).
Also the $300 plan I paid each month for sucked.. they fought me tooth and nail to cover things my doc prescribed.. I.e. Various scans(cat scan, etc).
For many (most?) cases you can still buy individual market directly with the insurer via phone/website. My understanding is you have to go through exchanges for certain subsidy situations.
> The cost was less too
> Also the $300 plan I paid each month for sucked
First off, the old way was for an employer to handle it for you. If you had your own solo insurance before, I'm impressed. I had a hard time finding health coverage as a freelancer years ago.
But more to your point, the cost was less, and sucked, because insurers could offer barebones, high-deductible plans that didn't really cover much except for catastrophic needs. Hence why you encountered high payments every time you actually needed healthcare.
In addition, premiums cost more now because:
- The highest risk and most expensive people were excluded from coverage entirely, either because they couldn't afford it or insurers refused to cover them, which they are no longer allowed to do. As a result, insurers are paying out more to cover medical treatment.
- Providers and drug companies continue to raise prices, while insurance premiums are regulated and locked annually.
- Government subsidies that were initially promised to insurers to help them cover gaps as they figured out the first few years of the ACA market were eliminated prematurely (cf. Marco Rubio).
As a result, annual increases have jumped dramatically as they adjust to increased care, increasing costs, and drops in subsidies.
So premiums are up because (a) you have better coverage (due to regulated minimum levels of coverage), (b) there are more sick people being covered (either because they couldn't afford coverage before or were excluded), and (c) net costs have risen.
> forced those who do and work to pay and cover for those who don't
I think that's an overly simplistic way of interpreting the situation.
What do you mean by "guaranteed-issue plan"? All insurers must offer at least the same standardized minimum plans (bronze etc.). Anyone who expects a subsidy must go through an exchange.
Insurers don't HAVE to sell direct to consumer (off exchange), but they're incentivized to do so because that population is on average healthier than that coming in through the exchange. Plus it's easier to manage customer records directly than rely on the data that comes from the state or federal exchanges.
Based on my understanding of the purpose of the Individual Mandate is that it's less that the well employed are subsidizing the under/unemployed, and more that the healthy are subsidizing the unhealthy.
With everyone left to their own devices, the elderly/unhealthy are strongly incentivized to have insurance, and the young and healthy might reasonably conclude that their best bet is to not pay for insurance, that results in higher average premiums.
People waiting until they get sick to sign up, essentially. The insurers' previous solution to this was no coverage of "pre-existing conditions". But people hated this generally, for various more or less good reasons. Banning exclusion of preexisting conditions is one of the handful of parts of Obamacare that's wildly popular across the political spectrum, at least among non-politicians (it polls something like 70-80% support). Obamacare's main replacement for that is the individual mandate requiring you to always have insurance, rather than to go without until you get seriously ill and only then purchase it. (There are also a few secondary things to try to discourage buying insurance only right before you're going to use it, like the open enrollment period being only once a year.)
Calling insurers and buying directly is potentially cheaper, because those insurers aren't selling marketplace plans --- the marketplace plans have guaranteed-issue requirements, and must conform to minimum standards that off-marketplace plans do not.
The downside is that if you have anything interesting on your medical history --- including many things in your past that aren't chronic conditions, but could be predictive of future health care costs in some circumstances --- you will be turned down without recourse. That's the problem with the pre-Obamacare individual health care market: it didn't work.
All the liberals down voting me oh well... I'm an independent and didn't vote for that maniac or that queen!
This is a simple issue of how healthcare Became more expensive, less accessible (primary care docs hard to find and not readily available to see you.. so we flood the ERs), harder to use(insurance companies throw up the gauntlet and don't want to pay for things prescribed) and a real pain in the butt to sign up for.
All the above happened because of Obamacare and its eye towards helping every man, woman and child access to affordable healthcare. But that mantra goes against capitalism and thus creates a system where care is worse because insurance companies who once covered most things aren't so they have enough money/profit to pay for those men, women and children who are poor and can't pay. That demographic is the winner and all others are the losers in this game. It's a losing game either way and soon for the poor so and again see ya Obamacare ... socialistic ideas working within a capitalistic system is going to fail.
If it was completely socialistic it might work, but heck no the govt already taxes me enough I don't want them taxing me at 60 to 70 percent!
Hopefully it is replaced with a better system! Time will tell.
*typed on crappy iPhone 7 whose auto correctness/AI needs work!!!
nuts? I'm paying $700/month for a family through an employer plan. The cost of the worse plan on Obamacare is about $1500 (oh, and before obamacare that plan would cost the same $1500 and come with pre-existing conditions crap).
Medicare for all, $120/month/person - problem solved.
Personally I preferred the previous way of signing up for coverage ... call up a private insurer and sign up? The cost was less too as I wasn't paying for insurance for lazy sally or Joe Schmoe! So for me Obamacare/social medicine forced those who do and work to pay and cover for those who don't. See ya Obamacare(love obama though).
Also the $300 plan I paid each month for sucked.. they fought me tooth and nail to cover things my doc prescribed.. I.e. Various scans(cat scan, etc).