Obamacare Increases Avg. Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For Women
forbes.comThis is scam "journalism" from Forbes, where you should expect no less.
They brush off the subsidies, which greatly reduce the cost of premiums for lower income people, and is a huge component of the law.
They also don't disclose what years of premium projections they're comparing. Presumably, pre- and post- ACA premiums are different years, because they would have to be. The cost of health care rises, and even without the ACA, you could run a headline that says 2014 premium rates are higher than 2012 premium rates.
Also, newer ACA plans are required to cover more things than pre-ACA plans. That costs more, but you get more for it.
No they don't brush of the subsidies. Or at least they claim they don't.
Quote: "For most people, subsidies won’t counteract rate shock ...
If you click on the “Your Decision” tab on our interactive map, you will now find the results, as assembled by Yevgeniy, for the 13 states plus D.C. in our original database. Here’s the bottom line: most people with average incomes will pay more under Obamacare for individually-purchased insurance than they did before."
So here in Massachusetts we have the Health Connector. This is "RomneyCare", of which "ObamaCare" is a superset.
Plans recently were just adjusted to be in-line with how they'll be priced when ACA comes into play, although we'll have to "officially" select new plans come 2014 that are "official ACA plans".
I'm single, early 30s, with some notable pre-exisitings (Type II diabetes, kidney stones). My premium with a major carrier (Harvard Pilgrim) went from $424 to $458, which is about an 8% increase.
Under what conditions would my premium increase to $844 (99% increase)? I don't see that being possible.
This is a wonderful example of how, given a complicated situation, picking your favourite numbers out of the pile can tell any story you like.
Yes, its true that for a healthy young person with an average income, rates (adjusted for subsidies, etc) will go up. They may even "skyrocket," say. But given the wealth distribution in this country, most people have less than an average income. I would be interested to see this analysis done for a healthy young person with median income- would probably look much better for the "progressive" side of this debate.
"Most people have less than an average income..."
You realize this is a mathematical impossibility, right?
EDIT: That's what I get for being snarky. Will leave my shame for all too see :)
There's a difference between median and mean. While both can be called "average", that term almost always means "mean".
If there are 9 employees making $30K/year and the owner makes $270K/year, then the average salary is $54K/year, but 9 of the 10 people are making below average.
Bill Gates made, what, $10 billion last year? Put him in a city with 100,000 people making $100,000/year. His arrival would cause the average salary to double, and all but one would have a less than average income.
If you have 3 people, one makes $97, the other two make $1 each, avg income is $33, and most people make less.
Not saying the parent statement is correct, but definitely not a mathematical impossibility...
Granted, from one side of the American political spectrum to the other, here is a post from a MSNBC page that has sources to discredit Mr. Roy: http://alturl.com/um2kk
Outside of America, MSNBC would probably be considered a slightly right of center publication.
> Remember that here, we aren’t conducting an exact comparison. Instead we’re comparing the lowest-cost bronze plan offered to the average participant in the exchanges, to the cheapest plan offered to 40-year-olds today.
This is a very dubious comparison; the cheapest plan offered to 40-year-olds probably does not cover as much as the bronze plan.
My understanding is that any plans that increases coverage for the old and sick is going to increase costs for the non-old and non-sick.
Well, whether or not you get increased coverage depends on what coverage you have now. Since a higher percentage of young people are either not covered at all or have bare-bones catastrophic plans, young people in general are going to get a larger increase in coverage than old. The ACA plans, as I understand it, all give more coverage than current barebones catastrophic plans. So it makes sense that their premiums might go up.
I'm not clear on to what extent premium payments from the young are treated as being in same pool as the old, in the new Obamacare system. I do know that part of the problem leading to current situation has been that young people don't have health insurance or have barebones coverage and that older people have been to some extent subsidizing health care needs of the young. If the new system cures that then it makes sense that premiums for older people may go down; younger people will now be paying closer to their fair share.
Regarding premiums for the non-sick going up and premiums for the sick going down, not sure about that. But the whole purpose of insurance is to spread costs evenly. My understanding is that many insurance companies have until now been allowed to create high cost policies that are sold to sick people. This runs counter to the idea of insurance; the cost of insurance should be the same whether you are sick or not. You pay for the insurance as a healthy person knowing that if you become sick you will be covered. Having policies with cohorts composed entirely of sick people is antithetical to the idea of health insurance.
Well, this doesn't sound good. But I can also tell the author really, really wants me to be outraged, so I dunno what to think.
Odd, Health and Human Services this morning said pretty much the opposite...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/25/h...
I DON'T KNOW WHO TO BELIEVE ANYMORE!
It sounds like we've managed to create the worst of both worlds. That's not ideal.