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

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

Rover said:
Didn't know if the employer in question self funded the plan or not...
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have to assume they worked with insurers to get options with pricing they wanted. (like progressive with 'name your price' too :p) the same parties work with your employer too. they have options with co-pays and they have options without co-pays.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

I still don't get the 'exchanges are bad' crowd.

Just because a company takes a profit hit...doesn't mean there's a problem with the marketplace. So here's a case where a company (who I admire) saw softening profits. It was driven by the exchanges. And that's not a good thing...its a great thing. There is unprecedented transparency in a marketplace where there was none. It forces companies throughout the sector to be more efficient. An analogy is if airlines charged $500 for a short flight, but were all very profitable. Would that be a great outcome? Nope.

We want companies that are profitable by offering quality services at a low price. The first of those to go is profit...as customers, we will not accept anything less.

UnitedHealth Reports Profit Decline Amid Exchange Weakness

http://www.wsj.com/articles/unitedhealth-reports-profit-decline-amid-exchange-weakness-1453204404
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

5mn_Major said:
I still don't get the 'exchanges are bad' crowd.

Just because a company takes a profit hit...doesn't mean there's a problem with the marketplace. So here's a case where a company (who I admire) saw softening profits. It was driven by the exchanges. And that's not a good thing...its a great thing. There is unprecedented transparency in a marketplace where there was none. It forces companies throughout the sector to be more efficient. An analogy is if airlines charged $500 for a short flight, but were all very profitable. Would that be a great outcome? Nope.

We want companies that are profitable by offering quality services at a low price. The first of those to go is profit...as customers, we will not accept anything less.

UnitedHealth Reports Profit Decline Amid Exchange Weakness

http://www.wsj.com/articles/unitedhealth-reports-profit-decline-amid-exchange-weakness-1453204404
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If government actually wants to be a competitor for a free-market area, that's one thing. The underlying issue is that it is much closer to cronyism, where they are using endless bureaucracy (similar to how certain private enterprises with which you disagree use lobbying) to "regulate" their competitors out and create a back-door monopoly, or in this case, back door single payer. You may not see it that way because of your feelings towards the entity creating the monopoly, but if you don't like one group for creating a situation that results in corruption, what makes you think the next entity that does it is going to be any different? If I'm not mistaken, there's a famous quotation about the definition of "insanity" that applies here... ;)
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Today saved $3600 on from the MNSure....local health exchange. Can probably find a use for that cash. $300 a month can get me a 2016 Acura.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

5mn_Major said:
I still don't get the 'exchanges are bad' crowd.
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I don't think anyone is saying "exchanges are bad," exchanges in theory have the potential to offer a wide array of decent choices at competitive pricing.

The problem is the confusing thicket of severe restrictions on what is allowed to be offered on the current exchanges.

While it is really technical, there is an inherent, built-in bias toward ever-higher premiums on the particular design of what is allowed. If the exchanges allowed insurance companies to make adjustments in response to adverse experience, it would be fine. But the law says that if you lose money you have to swallow the loss, while if you make money you have to refund a portion of the profits (if any) on an annual basis. before the law, insurance companies could use a five-year rolling average of annual losses/profits to stabilize pricing by offsetting bad years with good years. Now you can never have a good year, only a mediocre year, and you cannot even offset a bad year with a mediocre year either.

There used to be a kind of policy that was very popular in the marketplace called a "mini-med" plan. Those were inadvertently outlawed entirely, apparently because the law's drafters had never heard of them and wrote the law in such a sloppy and ill-considered fashion that they didn't even know they were making illegal a plan they had never heard of despite its widespread popularity.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

The law states you can no longer place an annual or lifetime cap on benefits.

Mini-med plans, as their name implies, only covered a couple thousand of dollars in expenses in a year. After accounting for premiums and co-pays, they amounted to essentially a discount for otherwise healthy people to see the doctor once or twice per year. If you got a major illness or injury, they did jack shiat because you'd still be left with tens of thousands in medical bills that would probably force you into personal bankruptcy, especailly since these plans were primarily given to low wage workers.

I don't think poor drafting made them illegal. I think they were intentionally made illegal.
 
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Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

FreshFish said:
I don't think anyone is saying "exchanges are bad," exchanges in theory have the potential to offer a wide array of decent choices at competitive pricing.
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Good. Because healthcare exchanges are one of the best marketplace innovations (not called the internet) we've seen in decades.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

5mn_Major said:
Today saved $3600 on from the MNSure....local health exchange. Can probably find a use for that cash. $300 a month can get me a 2016 Acura.
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Might want to put that money towards your other taxes, because that's where your "reduction" came from. ;)
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

5mn_Major said:
Today saved $3600 on from the MNSure....local health exchange. Can probably find a use for that cash. $300 a month can get me a 2016 Acura.
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Well, good for you. Mine went up 36% again this year. I guess I'm subsidizing your health care.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

ScoobyDoo said:
Well, good for you. Mine went up 36% again this year. I guess I'm subsidizing your health care.
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Well he needs good insurance, what with dodging bullets on 394 all the time ;)
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Why they had to stop it before it started.

The first full year of the Affordable Care Act brought historic increases in coverage for low-wage workers and others who have long been left out of the health care system, a New York Times analysis has found. Immigrants of all backgrounds—including more than a million legal residents who are not citizens—had the sharpest rise in coverage rates. […]

[T]he Times's analysis shows that by the end of that first full year, 2014, so many low-income people gained coverage that it halted the decades-long expansion of the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the American health insurance system, a striking change at a time when disparities between rich and poor are growing in many areas.

"The law has clearly reduced broad measures of inequality," said David Cutler, an economics professor at Harvard, who served in the Clinton administration and advised the 2008 Obama campaign on health issues. "These are people who blend into the background of the economy. They are cleaning your hotel room, making your sandwich. The law has helped this population enormously."
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As with social security and Medicare, the Republicans had to spew all their garbage about economic Armageddon and communism and try to kill this program before it helped human beings.

Can't wait for the next thing they attack. Public schools? Science? Oh, right, they're already on it. :p
 
Kepler said:
Why they had to stop it before it started.



As with social security and Medicare, the Republicans had to spew all their garbage about economic Armageddon and communism and try to kill this program before it helped human beings.

Can't wait for the next thing they attack. Public schools? Science? Oh, right, they're already on it. :p
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They got coverage. Did they get access to quality health care? Of so, could they afford it?
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

joecct said:
They got coverage. Did they get access to quality health care? Of so, could they afford it?
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While neither of us has that information, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say something > nothing.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

Kepler said:
While neither of us has that information, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say something > nothing.
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OK. I'm the government. I'm stealing all your money. In return, those Mexicans will live like kings. Oh, and here's a 20. Something still better than nothing?
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

FlagDUDE08 said:
OK. I'm the government. I'm stealing all your money. In return, those Mexicans will live like kings. Oh, and here's a 20. Something still better than nothing?
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The Drug War thread is next door.
 
Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!

joecct said:
They got coverage. Did they get access to quality health care? Of so, could they afford it?
Click to expand...

You're right Joe, the ACA doesn't go far enough. Glad you realize that and that it's keeping you up at night :rolleyes:
 
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