I have just renewed my insurance through healthcare.gov, and it was a miserable experience. I would like to share with you some untrue statements.
Q: Will my premiums / costs go up because of health reform?
A: No.
According to the independent and non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, people who get coverage through their employer today will likely see lower premiums.
Reform will lower premiums by reducing administrative costs, increasing competition between insurance companies and creating a larger pool of insured Americans.
I very much liked the plan I signed up for last year: a Blue Cross Keystone Silver Pro-active plan. $27/month after my subsidy, no deductible, same doctor I’ve gone to for years (even when i had no insurance, she filled my asthma prescription), and no deductible on prescriptions.
But my premium DID go up. By $106.00. After my subsidy, which is smaller than last year even though I make less money, my new bill would be $133/month. Maybe for some people that’s not a lot of money. For me, it is. That is a 396% increase.
This led to another untrue statement: If you like your plan you can keep it. Under ObamaCare you can keep your health insurance until 2015, even if it doesn’t comply with the ACA. When a premium increase coupled with a reduced subsidy put your plan out of reach, you can’t keep your plan. So I had to switch plans. The only silver I could afford was, after subsidies, $96/month. That is a 255% increase in my premium.
This led to another untrue statement: “No matter how we reform health care,” Obama said in 2009, “we will keep this promise: if you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.”
Not true. I was unable to afford a decent Blue Cross Silver plan similar to what I had before (I’m not purchasing a Bronze, that’s a waste of money). My doctor isn’t in my new insurer’s network, which means I have to get my hands on a supply of asthma meds ASAP because I have no idea how long it will, take to get an appointment with whoever my new doctor is (and of course, I’ll have to FIND a new doctor as well).
Now, I know someone in comments is going to say “It’s not all about you”, which I guess is true. But my $26,000/year salary boils down to $1600/month after taxes, which needs to cover a mortgage, child support, student loan, two years of back taxes I couldn’t afford to pay the IRS when I was freelancing, credit card, electric, gas heat during winter (upwards of $300/month or more), water, and of course food.
I should also add that it looks like, under my new plan, my asthma meds go from $5.00/month to $50.00/month (I will update if I’m wrong). So there’s that too. but as you can imagine, I’m not happy about this at all.
With single payer, you’d get all of that. And it wouldn’t cost you a cent.
I read it on DKos.
Did you try and find a new plan?
I fail to remain optimistic that this will really “work” when people don’t change plans year after year. Data from Switzerland and the Netherlands, only 2-4% of Swiss changed plans while 3-4% of Dutch changed plans.
This is to be expected, as similar surveys report similar numbers here in the US, with around 70% expecting to keep their plans, and 7%(!) expected to shop around.
People don’t want to “shop” for insurance. It’s a hassle, it’s difficult to understand, and if you aren’t good at mathematical statistics you probably don’t even know what plan is technically “best for you.” I thought of changing to a high deductible ($1500) plan with GEHA, as it has a HSA attached and half my current premium (current plan deductible is $350), but I didn’t have time to crunch the numbers and just stuck with what I have. So, so stupid.
Yes. I say as much in the article above. My new plan is $99/month. That’s a 255% increase from what I paid last year, it’s the only silver plan I could afford (I’m 44 years old and a parent, Bronze plans are a non-starter for me), and I don’t get to keep my doctor.
So contrary to what I was promised by this administration, premiums DID in fact go up, and massively so; I didn’t get to keep my plan, because I can’t afford it; and I didn’t get to keep my doctor.
My mistake, I misread your first two paragraphs after your block quote of the administration.
And damn straight people hate shopping for insurance. It’s the WORST.
I’m sure I’m going to hate this. I already do, actually, because now I have to shop around for a new fucking doctor.
That phenomenon has been true of Medicare Part D for years and was true my wife’s Obamacare plan which went from $0 premium (totally subsidized) to $69 a month. The forced churn in the policies, the complicated terms, and the ever-switching networks of participating providers is what was forced on old people first in the Bush administration.
Medicare Part A works but it now has balance billing by providers. No deductible, no co-pay, no balance billing. Let the debate over cost be between large insurers and the federal government with the little guy out of being caught in the middle. Either medical services for all or Medicare for all would do that.
Myself, I’ve dropped Medicare Part D entirely. My wife and I are debating what to do about Obamacare. Deadline’s tomorrow. If we don’t make it, it’s $69 a month until we fail to pay and then she’s dropped.
After seeing a full year an one health event covered under Obamacare, it is great from the middle class who have the funds to cover the lowered individual premiums by being pooled. It extends some benefits to people with low incomes, but it continue to put people with low incomes in a huge bind and is only marginally better than what Alan Grayson described as the Republican health care plan: “Don’t get sick. If you get sick, die quickly.”
If is possible financially to have a sane health care system. But like most sane things, the US political system lacks the political will to sanity.
I’ve been pursuing some work in DC, but damned if I might have to move to fucking vermont.
I actually decided to finally make an account here just to explain something to you, very slowly.
You don’t understand health care insurance coverage at all–like, what it is, if you interpreted the first statement as a falsehood. The Question “will my premiums go up” is answered w/r/t “employer” health insurance, which you aren’t purchasing–you are on the independent market. The statement was, in addition, tempered by the words “will likely see lower premiums” that means, specifically and clearly, that some won’t and possibly all won’t–“likely” doesn’t mean “definitely.”
Second of all you can keep your doctor–you just have to pay more to do so or you have to purchase a plan you don’t want to in order to have that privilige.
Since no President has the power to force a doctor to accept a particular health insurance plan or patient your “right” to keep your doctor has not been affected by Obamacare in the slightest. The President’s obvious meaning was that the government was not going into the business of managing people’s health care as through an NHS style system: the government wasn’t going to buy up all the doctors and practices and wasn’t going to force you to change doctors. But they system of private health insurance has never meant that you could easily keep seeing the same doctor at the same rate of remuneration you previously saw. I can assure you, having had employer based health care coverage through my spouse for many years, that we have ZERO control over what health insurance plans are offered us or which doctors will take them.
I’m sorry that health care subsidies aren’t adequate to providing you with basically free health care. Since bad old Obamacare barely made it through the sausage making system I don’t see how the fantasy great health care systems, like Single Payer, could have done so. So definitionally, even if you don’t have something you love, you are better off than you would have been before when you either
Still, you can’t blame him for being unhappy about the situation. ObamaCare does have some serious flaws, and this is one of them.
The problem, of course, is that we’re up against people who will latch onto any failure in any law as an excuse to repeal the whole government. On balance, the ACA certainly is better than the alternative, because the alternative is nothing at all. But then you find yourself having to defend the law more forcefully than it really deserves. We need to fix the system, not repeal it.
Sigh… I’m not even going to begin.
This is the market based system that R’s should love, and the only reason they don’t is because Obama passed it. When I worked for a small employer we were forced into new plans and doctors every two years and our deductibles went from $250 to $5000. Brendan’s circumstances are troubling. I would like to know the reasons for the big hike.
Actually they don’t like the medical loss ratio, or the fact that insurance companies have to insure you even with pre-existing conditions, or the fact that you can’t lose your insurance if you get sick, or the many other patient protections and regulations (including what constitutes health care-see medical loss ratio). All of these things were most definitely not part of the Republican exchange idea.
The point is that when people’s interactions with a thing are unpleasant and unpredictable, they make life more stressful. Stress has a real impact on people’s lives, and it forms very negative associations. If you think the objective good of health insurance is going to overcome people’s resentment of that stress, you’re out to lunch, and you’re going to lose elections.
Also, I don’t know your story, but your tone is borderline troll. If you have any eventual hope of being taken seriously, you should step back and reconsider how you talk to people who are sharing their troubles.
Yes. I’m not a troll, if by that you mean some kind of agent provacateur or generically mean person. And I have tremendous sympathy for everyone in our current health care setup, especially people who have chronic health issues and also have money issues. But I take exception to the “falsehoods” part of the title and the insistence that the writer’s problems somehow boil down to lies told by the President or the website. That’s just an incredibly horrible accusation to make and its not accurate.
That being said the writer sounds like he should make little enough that he and his wife would have been eligible for medicaid–is he in a state where the medicaid expansion was denied and also a state in which the state refused to set up an exchange? Because both those would be important facts to know in using his specific case to basically attack Obamacare as a tissue of lies, built on lies.
I’m extremely sympathetic to the writer and his experience, which sounds horrible. And I, of course, have the experience of being uninsured in my own past, and of wrestling with an unforgiving health care system although for the past few years we have had employer sponsored healthcare which, like everyone else’s in the country, goes up every year and covers less. We have an extremely high deductible as well and are not eligible to go on the health care exchanges to look for a better deal.
So even to me Obamacare is not perfect and I am not speaking from a place of safety in terms of my own medical/health care future.
However I am extremely grateful to the President for having rammed this through, however flawed, because I now know that 1) my asthmatic daughter will be able to get health insurance when she leaves our plan, 2) if my husband loses his job we will be able to get health insurance even though we have pre-existing conditions, etc..etc…etc…
I’m not denying the program has problems and I’m not denyign that some people are not having as great a time with it as they should. But I just realy object to accusations, such as the falsehood accusation, that the President and the people writing the laws were acting in bad faith or that the flaws in the implementation of the law are not, basically, down to republican sabotage (of the exchanges and of the medicaid expansion, for example). And now, of course, in the new omnibus bill, of the risk corridors that made the entire thing work.
At any rate I urge you to read Richard Mayhew’s series of blog posts about the ACA for a better understanding of how and why certain people are getting screwed. And how and why so many people are doing relatively well under it.
read my comment below.
I enjoyed your remark about my wife. I had wanted to say “you know NOTHING about my circumstances” and now you have saved me the effort with your ignorant statement.
All I know is that I now have to pay $70 more than i did last year, and I already underwater. I have to undertake the annoying task of finding a new doctor, and going through the waiting period THAT whole thing entails.
But PLEASE. Knock it off with the condescending “bad old Obamacare” bullshit, OK? Don’t respond to me like I’m some fucking tea bagger, because I’m not one of those people. I’ve been quick to praise the ACA when it’s worked well, and I’ve criticized it when it’s NOT worked well.
And for the LOVE OF GOD:
… do NOT put arguments in my mouth. I never said that anyone is less better off OVERALL due to Obamacare: you set THAT strawman up yourself.
And now, I have to figure out how I’m going to come up with an extra $70 each month, so I’ll bid you adieu for now. Unless you have a writing or editing job to offer me: my rates, depending on the work are $25-65 an hour.
You said Obama lied and he pointed out that Obama didn’t lie. That is not condescending or trollish.
I’ve been in the health insurance market for forty-eight years, so let me give you the benefit of experience and re-state what BoomanAiMai has said.
1. “Will my health care costs go up because of Healthcare reform.” (emphasis added).
That’s not a lie because of the “because” qualifier. In those 48 years I have never seen premiums come down. It’s not the ACA causing the premium increase. it’s the way prices always go.
2. “If you like your plan you can keep it.”
That’s not a lie because you could keep your plan. Your carrier made the decision to charge more. The government didn’t force you out of it. Economics forced you out of it.
3. “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” Not a lie. The government isn’t assigning you to a doctor like under Hillarycare. From your story, it sounds like if you kept your previous policy, which you could have, everything would be fine with your doc. I know you couldn’t afford to, so let me give you a tip or two. Before changing insurance plans, talk to your doctor and her billing staff. Ask what networks they do belong to. You can shop among those plans. Also, most docs will take an out of network payment then bill you for the rest. Get the facts, then decide. They can’t tell you how much they are going to charge under plan A or plan B, unfortunately, but you can get a rough idea from what percentage the plans say they pay for in-network and out of network.
BTW, I have asthma too. My medicine, Symbicort, costs $90 a month and that’s under a so-called Cadillac plan for which I pay 432 a month and my employer pays over $1000. I also pay $40 a month for Benicar and had a stress test this year that set me back $754. I won’t even go into the details of surgery for both me and my wife, all of which would be no cost to us in any civilized country like the UK or Germany.
Your problems are due to the system of treating sickness like auto accidents and the general wage disparity in the USA, not the ACA. I’m no friend of Obama. In fact, I now rate him as an enemy after his support of this CRapOmnibus bill. But intellectual honesty compels me to say he did not lie.
And, your rates are now zero per hour. Welcome to the blue collar world. You have to fight like a mongrel dog for every scrap. Don’t know you background. I’m assuming you were born middle-class so you’re not prepared by childhood experience and breeding like I am for life as a domestic animal. Swallow your pride and start looking for a job slinging hash. And be grateful that at least your government isn’t issuing unlimited H1-B Visas to bring foreign editors into the USA.
As an aside, it’s has been fascinating to watch the downward spiral of my earnings over time. Once I became a dad, i quit serious touring/music for a long time, and got real work, and now I have a ten-year career as a grant writer. From 2005-2011, my income went up, peaking at $46K. Then I lost a job, the economy by then had expired, freelancing carried me for a few years but left me in debt to the IRS, and now all i’ve been able to find is part-time, making less than I did when I was in my 20s.
It’s a fucked up situation we’re all in right now.
Agreed. Mine peaked (inflation adjusted) in 1973.
BTW, the “swallow your pride” et cetera remark I made was one I given to my own descendants. Think of it as practical advice not condemnation.
I have some prior intertoobz acquaintance with aimai. She is a she and a decided non-troll. Like many of our friends here she is not a word-mincer. Whatever she says is worth listening to; even if you end up disagreeing you’ll still have learned something.
Not me, Brendan. As far as I’m concerned it is all about you and people in similar situations. If it’s failing for you in this way it’s a pretty big failure.
Though it seems beyond weird that a (normal) rise in the income baseline the subsidy is calculated on should intersect with a premium rise in such a catastrophic way. But this is the second story of the kind I’ve heard from trustworthy people, and I’m shocked. It really sucks.
A friedn just saw hers go from $12/month to $53.
Imagine how poor you have to be to get a subsidy that brings your premium down to $12. Imagine how an increase of $41 can affect your bottom line when you’re that poor.
I just renewed by Silver Plan last night. It had gone up $2 from 2014. If you get a chance, read this piece from Richard Mayhew who blogs over at Balloon Juice.
There were 2 other Silver plans available to me that were $50 and $60 bucks cheaper, it’s a difference of whether you get 20% deductible or a copay of $15-$50 and the network is the whole state with no specialist referrals needed.
This is not an uncommon story. The ACA has been a huge hassle for some people, and surprise surprise, oftentimes people who are already marginalized. The unhappy truth is that there are a wide variety of horror stories associated with the ACA.
No number of people who don’t suffer such hassles makes that not true.
Present and future leaders in the Democratic Party will need to fix it, because as it is, they are paying a political cost with a small but significant group of swing voters.
While there are plenty of stories of struggle to get free of health care raw deals, that’s always been the case. People who sail through health care offerings are oftentimes people who simply have virgin cards and aren’t aware of the hassles that await them.
Before the ACA my rates were going up 22-25% a year, every year. It was a terrifying nightmare and so I get it why Brendan is not just frustrated but pretty damn scared as well. What he’s going through is impossible. It’s just not right.
But please Brendan, do read the Richard Mayhew link. There are some things in the Silver plan that are 2ndary subsidies you may not have discovered yet. I hope they’re something you can take advantage of.
Would it be rude of me to note that your $133/month subsidized plan would cost well above $1000 without the subsidy, and that is the true cost of providing that level of insurance coverage in this regulated market that requires a low ,medical loss ratio of all providers. That the $133/insurance is good insurance that will protect you from catastrophic losses. That a much cheaper bronze plan would also protect you from catastrophic losses and provide good coverage once the deductible is met? I don’t know if you have significant health problems beyond your asthma, but I do know the fact that you can get individual insurance at all with preexisting conditions is because of this law.
This may be an argument that Medicaid needs to be extended to cover higher incomes, but that ain’t gonna happen. I understand that you are in a financial box, but I also understand that $133 for that insurance is a hell of a deal.
How do you figure well above $1000 a month without subsidy? Even the most expensive plans in Brendan’s estimated zip-code is $500-600 with no subsidy (platinum plans).
I don’t know his age or really anything about him. I know that the bronze plan we just picked up for my wife and I is over $1000 before subsidy, and silver about $1400.
I estimated age in mid 40’s, and covering just himself.
It’s not rude to suggest that, and i HAVE in fact noted in the past that overall, O’care is a good deal. Hell, even at $133 it’s a good deal.
THAT SAID: out of reach is out of reach. And $133 is, by any responsible budgeting, out of reach for me given my income and expenses. For that matter, so is $96, just not as badly.
Our silver plans run up to about $800 w/o subsidies. I’m wondering whether Brendan, you could go to a navigator today or tomorrow and check out the situation. There were some providers who discovered they had offered plans that were way too cheap in ’14 and have made adjustments upwards, with the permission of the ACA board.
With the option of changing plans when one is too expensive or doesn’t meet your needs is something that supports the capitalistic approach…so you can shop, you can switch, it’s not the ACA that is screwing you, it’s the individual market providers. Hopefully you can go back into the site and find a better plan. Good luck.
it’s too late, I selected my plan.
Also, I can’t get into the site. I remember my password, but healthcare.gov doesn’t. I don’t remember my 3 passwords exactly, but there’s no alternate way to access my account other than the secret questions.
Ah yes, been there, done that. I know you’re p**ssed but do try the phone number and call. A navigator would probably just annoy you, mine annoyed me. Even if you chose your plan you’re still allowed to make a correction before the deadline. It’s too much money to give up.
Dude, if you’re claiming the “i can’t log in” excuse you just lost all credibility with me. Yes, you have to put in some effort. Good grief. Do it.
You didn’t even try to get your password, did you? Because if you had, you’d know that you don’t need your security questions to recover your password from healthcaredotgov. Just your username. I know because I did it. Also, if you don’t remember your username, all you need to supply is your first and last name and the email you used when you created the account. And, I’m not a troll, either. I just don’t want people to be mis-informed by what you wrote.
Nope, I tried that. All of that. You are 100% wrong.
for that matter, I was on the line with customer service and they couldn’t get me in either. 😛 to you.
Keep tryin Brendan, keep tryin!
OOIOOoooo!!!
You;re not a good DemocRat!!!
You just woke the fuck up.
Sorry, Brendan.
I been tellin‘ y’all.
Just because the so-callewd right wing is full of shit doesn’t mean the equally so-called left wing isn’t.
If the Foo shits, wear it.
Later…
AG
So what’s your solution to the authoer getting health insurance for less than $133 a month with a pre-existing condition? Come on Mr. Libertarian, share with us all…
As long as Dr. Big Brother, Big Pharma and Big Insurance are in cahoots, literally rolling in dough and major contributors to (read “owners of”) every major RatPub and DemRat politician in the land Brendan and everyone else in this country making less than about $70K/per year are up the health creek without a paddle. That’s why I wrote” “if the Foo shits, wear it.” Do you know that old joke?
It goes like this:
Gotta get rid of the Foo birds, not just try to wash off their shit.
Like dat.
AG
Are you going to drop the insurance?
Sure it would be better if we could improve it. We can’t right now. If that upsets you, talk to the GOP.
Unless you are contending that you were better off before Obamacare, I’m not sure what the point of this is. Frankly, I’d love to debate all the ways we can improve Obamacare, but until Democrats control all three houses – about 2020 is my guess at when the US will basically turn into California – it will remain roughly what it is., which is an epic improvement on the previous situation.
What he said….
correction: “branches” not “houses”