The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Hmm. This is interesting. It's the first reasonable argument I've read from the anti- side.

They don't teach the concept of inelastic pricing in the Ivy League schools, eh?

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Because all these price increases have gone through.

You've got this totally backwards. The government regulatory action's role would be to stop insurance prices from going up.

Assuming that's their goal...

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

The government does not set health insurance pricing and premiums.

Under the ACA, health care cost increases in 2015 were the lowest EVER MEASURED.

http://www.milliman.com/mmi/

Yet prices charged for health insurance are on their way up. Price hikes are all on the insurance companies. For the fifth time Clown, the government does NOT dictate insurance pricing.

In 2007, 2008, and 2009, etc. the cost increase was also the lowest EVER MEASURED and there was no ACA.

In fact the percentage increase in cost of medical services according to your link has basically been in linear decline since 2003. Roughly declining 2% in the six years before ACA and another 2% in the years since. This doesn't really seem to support a causal relationship between the ACA and a decline in the % of increase.

[Kepler]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

They don't teach the concept of inelastic pricing in the Ivy League schools, eh?

Hell if I know, I was a theatre major.

[Handyman]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Hell if I know, I was a theatre major.

Oh lord that explains SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much

[FreshFish]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

They have the power to reject pricing requests. The state receives the data from the companies as to why those companies believe their products should be priced as such. If the state's reviewers (auditors) believe that the company(ies) in question is looking for an egregious profit or should instead expect a loss, then they are bound by law to reject the proposed pricing changes.

My point isn't at all that any of this should be a surprise to anyone. It's that people actually expected the product to inherently change because the Feds grabbed more control of what the product does. The only way to control price increases the way the Obama administration promised while selling the PPACA to the public and politicians alike is for the Feds to increase the direct subsidies to the end consumers. Anyone who's studied economics will tell you that then this will relieve pricing discipline press from the supplier, and prices will further rise at unsustainable rates. Or you let the consumers suffer the pricing increases.

In essence, we're repeating exactly what we've done with college tuition assistance plans over the past three decades, only now we're applying it to a product that people consider more serious and with fewer legal options for the consumers to use.

Most people don't understand at all how rate-setting works. The insurance company sets rates at the beginning of the year based on an educated guess; they really have no way to know what their experience will be: while they set rates at the start of the year, actual claims experience is only known at the end of the year. What has been happening is that
-- some people have waited until they get sick, sign up for coverage, then once they recover they drop their plan again.
-- more sick people have signed up than anticipated
-- fewer young, healthy people have signed up than anticipated
-- consequently, claims experience has been much worse than the start-of-year rates would have indicated.

One of the biggest problems with PPACA is it caps annual profits while it leaves annual losses uncapped. Just imagine, if instead of mandating a minimum annual loss ratio of 85%, the law had mandated a five-year rolling average loss ratio instead. That would have allowed some pricing stability over time. Instead, we have insurers chasing their tails; as every rate increase merely exacerbates the negative spiral outlined above.

Between risk assessment, coverage levels, and loss ratios, you can only mandate two of the three; basic mathematics requires that the third seek its own level. the law tries to mandate all three independent of each other: mathematically impossible. it is inherently unstable and never will work unless one of these three areas is freed from statutory restrictions.

There is a fairly simple and straightforward fix available, actually but the way the politics are, the Dummycrats won't entertain even the slightest hint of a single revision and the Repugnicans are too fixated on repeal to bother offering up an interim fix.


Frankly, I think Roberts deliberately sabotaged the law: by making it an optional tax when he declared the mandate unconstitutional under the commerce clause, he (a) allowed people not to sign up for coverage with a clean conscience, and (b) made it impossible to increase what once had been the "penalty" without new legislative action because all tax increases must originate in the House. He clearly understood that the mandate was the only way the law might possibly work and he removed that possibility.

[joecct]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

2017 Federal Employee and Retiree Health Insurance rates. Retirees pay monthly and employees pay biweekly.

For the record, I am Maryland Aetna Open Access Basic Self & Family. My wife and I will be switching to self only (she pays and I pay) and we'll save about $40/mo in premiums.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

It's all "Value" based pricing. They all can go to hell.

[St. Clown]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Minnesota's insurance rate hikes are will be between 50-67% for 2017.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/0...ce-rates-2017/

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Minnesotans shopping for individual health insurance will be seeing a hike in premiums next year.

State officials announced the rates for 2017 Friday morning. The Minnesota Department of Commerce and MNSure said the rate increase ranges from 50 to 67 percent in the individual market.

The announcement comes ahead of the 2017 enrollment period, which begins on Nov. 1.

Premiums are going up because health insurance companies didn’t expect to cover as much as they have.

[walrus]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Minnesota's insurance rate hikes are will be between 50-67% for 2017.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/0...ce-rates-2017/

Thats quite a hit

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Minnesota's insurance rate hikes are will be between 50-67% for 2017.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/0...ce-rates-2017/

Not surprising at all.

[SJHovey]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

I'm not sure where else to put this, but I saw this article about former UND hockey player Adam Calder who is living in England. I thought the references in the article to the fact that the NHS won't cover all of the treatment that Adam needs to fight his cancer was interesting, and a slight cautionary note to anyone who thinks the single payer plan is going to be magic solution.

http://www.coventryblaze.co.uk/news/...alder-20160929

[unofan]

I'm not sure where else to put this, but I saw this article about former UND hockey player Adam Calder who is living in England. I thought the references in the article to the fact that the NHS won't cover all of the treatment that Adam needs to fight his cancer was interesting, and a slight cautionary note to anyone who thinks the single payer plan is going to be magic solution.

http://www.coventryblaze.co.uk/news/...alder-20160929

It'd be nice to know why the treatments aren't covered. If it's because they aren't approved by whatever Britain's equivalent of the FDA is, that's different than not being covered because of cost or not being on the right list or something endemic with single payer.

I'll just say that my wife was prescribed medicine for her pregnancy that wasn't covered by insurance because it wasn't FDA approved for that usage (it's approved as a fertility treatment, but not to maintain a pregnancy). So to save about 60%, we went thru a Canadian pharmacy who actually shipped it to us from the UK. No issues whatsoever and way cheaper than going to any local pharmacy.

[joecct]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

This could go a number of ways - quite a few of them bad.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory

[FreshFish]

Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

This could go a number of ways - quite a few of them bad.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory

I read through the article and I had two thoughts.
-- I saw no indication that they tested whether political affiliation/patient interactions were correlated with geography: maybe doctors in private practice in the suburbs both affiliate one way and interact with patients one way, while doctors in urban clinics affiliate another way and interact with patients another way. What they viewed as a correlation might merely mean that both of the indicators they measured correlate with a third variable that is more fundamental than what they looked at.
-- it seems like they might have the correlation backwards. Maybe doctors who have a particular world view about their patients' personal responsibility for their own future health might also tend to affiliate in a certain way politically. The article was written as if it were the other way around, which makes little sense (unless you are one of those who view everything as primarily political).