But the exchanges aren’t working
My question is what can an angrybear do to help people who received a scary letter from their insurance company informing them that their mininsurance is cancelled and offering them a chance to pay 10 times as much. I think it is easy to provide useful links.
So I will soon consider the case of John Doe a single father with 2 children who lives in zip code 32308 (a random 5 digit number). He paid$45 per month for health non insurance for himself and is offered a $1393 month plan by Boringsong yellow shield (amount and insurance company name totally fictional and not at all reminiscent of a fine firm which is sending completely different letters)
OK time stamp 15:31 pm Rome time
First www.healthsherpa.com (set up by public spirited nerds) $555.24 per month for 3
Time stamp 15:35 Rome time (3 mintes including figuring out how to set for 3 people when default is 1)
OK now what about a subsidy ? The site which works (untill millions try to use it) is http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/ (found it remembering only kff.org from their main page). Family income $60,000 subsidy $554 a year
“you could enroll in a Bronze plan for about $4,906 per year (which is 8.18% of your household income, after taking into account $554 in subsidies).”
time stamp 15:40 Rome time
OK now let’s try the dread www.healtcare.gov but just window shop. Window shopping has been available for over a month.
https://www.healthcare.gov/find-premium-estimates/
Oh crap I need the county and have to find what county includes zip code. Tallahassee Leon country Fla
http://www.zip-codes.com/zip-code/32308/zip-code-32308.asp
Bronze Bue options essential. Estimate $ 482.07
Hmm the numbers aren’t the same (it depends on whether I entered ages of kids I think)
tme stam 15:48
I get answers from three sites (all clearly approximate) in 17 minutes.
Some of that time is navagating sites (to get to the useful links above) and figuring out what county I’m pretending to live in.
www.healthcare.gov worked as designed. Pages loaded quickly and there were no error messages. However, it was verrry patronizing insisting on telling me what minimum benefits are and reminding me again and again that I would probably get a subsidy but that I better to to kff.org for a guess as to what it might be, because no way is a Federal site going to even hint at an amount without John Doe’s social security number etc.
The bad news is that, now………the website works. People can find out how much their insurance costs are going up.
… or down. I’d think that establishing a transparent marketplace for insurance would be a win for everyone but the insurance companies. Part of that is actually defining what insurance covers in a consistent way, which is what the ACA does.
As I made clear ithe post, window shopping at http://www.healthcare.gov has been working ine or over a month. KFF.org has been working fine for months. People have long been able to tell if they will pay more or less. Most will find they pay less.
Look disagreeing with the general slant of Angrybearblog is excellent, but, please read the posts before commenting.
Sammy
Today I just redid what I did at my personal blog ladt month
http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.it/2013/10/do-your-jobs-cbs-news-staff.html
There has long been no proble checking Obamacare prices with http://www.healthcare.gov. I wrote the current post not to note the news that it is still quick and easy but to express my frustration that so many people assert that it isn’t quick and easy *and* report complaints about rate shock without doing the few minutes of due diligance at http://www.healthcare.gov.
I had assumed that people nerdy enough to read angrybearblog.com all knew that the ability to quickly and easily check prices at http://www.healthcare.gov was nothing new. I am surprised by your ignorance.
“Most will find they pay less.”
That’s right, it’s going to cut premiums $2,500 per year. It was in the same speech where Obama promised that “if you like your plan, you can keep you plan.” “Period.”
dear Sammy 16 minutes ago on twitter
Philip Gourevitch @PGourevitch 16m
Shopping for Obamacare: family of 4 in NY. For same $7,000-deductible plan I have now I save $200/mo. For price I pay now: no deductible.
Retweeted by Zerlina Maxwell
Reply Retweet Favorite More Expand
OK so $2,400 isn’t $2.500 but it’s pretty close no ?
Robert, KFF.org is a single company web site and only compares its own prices. It is not an open comparison site as those prices are still only now becoming available. It provides a hypothetical only comparison.
Try comparing apples to apples instead of apples to hypothetical fruits.
Also the comparison prices have been available in principle since October 1. It has been possible to chekc them easily and quickly for about a month, that is since the window shopping option was turned on. On October 29 it took me about 5 minutes to find premiums for plans available on the Polk County Florida exchange (http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.it/2013/10/do-your-jobs-cbs-news-staff.html)
The claim that rices are only now becoming availble is bssolutely totally utterly false as I demonstrated weeks ago.
It is astonishing how many gross errors if fact you managed to fit into your brief commnent.
Further consumer reports has point out and it should be noted that if one is not subsidy eligible you can go to the sherpa site, and then directly to the insurance company you select to enroll. Or go to ehealthinsurance.com. It is only if you are subsidy eligible and want it that you have to go to the exchanges. It also appears that there are ACA compliant policies not on the exchanges, (which don’t get subsidies ) as well.
CoRev
Sorry I promised not to read your comments. My misyptake. The Kaiser Family Foundation is a non profit. It is does not offer insurance. Your comment makes me think of someone who decides that to ignore what the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation wtites about HIV, because iOS supports bettervirus checkers than Windows.
The KFF site had nothing in particular to do with health care provided by Kaiser Permanente. It uses data on premiums from the exchanges. http://Www.healthcare.gov directs people to KFF.org (those are some of the patronising pages I have to click through).
Your comment demostrates complete utter ignorance.
One of the purpose of the website was to cut health insurance sales people out of the loop, and wow didn’t that work out fine.
So now we have a bulky website and navigators. The whole navigator thing is a really dumb jobs programs for Democrat hangers-on which allows poorly trained amateurs to be involved with complex insurance products and confidential information.
Despite all that I hope the thing works, because if not by early next year we have a disaster of epic proportions.
INsurance salespeople are in the loop only if potential insurance buyers don’t feel like spending 5 minutes on a web site. I stress again that quotes have been reliably available in 5 minutes since I began checking in mid October. I dind’t report that I could find out how much healht insurance costs in any county in the USA, just because I don’t point out everything I read on the web which would be borrrrring.
I did report an efforton October 29th (which took about 5 minutes) only when CBS failed to perform the 5 minutes of due diligence.
The horrible truth that many people think that you still have to set up an account to window shop has only sunk in recently. This widespread belief is due a massive failure of the news media. They have written a lot about http://www.healthcare.gov but neglected that key point.
I promise for over a month I have been checking prices. I have had no trouble. In contrast, I had a trouble with rjwaldmann.blogspot.com. Generally the web has been frustrating recently with web pages kicking me out so I have to start over or going blank or my browswer freezing. In contrast to many many other sites, http://www.healthcare.gov has worked find.
Also for Rusty, I note that the Kaiser Family Foundation is a non profit whcih happens to be the best source of data relative to health care financing (HSS also has data but KFF is more user friendly).
Anyone who has internet access and is functionally literate (in English or Spanish) can qquickly and easily cut out insurance salesmen using http://www.healthcare.gov. This has been true for well over a month now.
Now actually buying insurance involves forking over a lot of money. It also involves setting up and account, which wasn’t quick and easy in early October and other steps which I haven’t tried because I have insurance. But getting enough information to find that the insurance company is trying to sell you a product more expensive thta competing products is+ trivially easy as it has been for over a month.
Oh, geeez, Robert. Like you couldn’t warn me BEFORE I got to the Boringsong yellow shield thing that I needed to swallow my sip of red wine before I read on? Something like: WARNING. VERY FUNNY LINE AHEAD?
Oh, dear. What have I wrought?
Seriously, Robert: Nice work.
PS: How incredibly sad it is that Obama doesn’t tell the public what you just told AB readers, instead of just mindlessly agreeing that what these anecdotes claim is accurate and saying, “Oh, gosh. I’m sorry.” But them what else is new?
Should say, “But then, what else is new?”
Does this guy really not know the info that you posted here, Robert, or has he just not figured out that this is important information to pass along to the public?
Beverly and Robert, you do know that the sites referenced do not provide actual values for the plan, just representative costs. Indeed healthcare.gov says this: “Important note: The monthly premiums shown DO NOT take into account your income and household details. Premium amounts shown in this tool are only examples, based on a limited set of sample ages and scenarios. They may not fully reflect your individual situation. Actual plan pricing can change based on your household size, income, ages, and tobacco use.”
Later it says this:
“Prices shown are for monthly premiums only. Deductibles, copayments, and other out-of-pocket costs are not shown.”
Saving this turkey by making more inaccurate/exaggerated claims is NOT what this administration needs. BTW, all this information has been readily available for weeks.
CoRev:
There exists something called the MAGI which is even less than the total income one might use on the KFF calculator which would impact the amount of subsidy one might receive. One could expect not to pay greater than $6,000 as an individual or $12,000 as a family in out of pocket which would include deductibles as it does today. Premiums cited are approximate dependent upon plan choose either silver or bronze. I am not sure what your beef is as these estimates are pretty close.
CoRev’s beef is with anything ‘Left of Center’ on any topic whatsoever.
He vehemently supported the war on Iraq, has been a stalwart Climate Change Denier, a strong critic of Social Security, and hated Obamacare and dare I say Obama from the beginning.
If you are a ‘Left of Center’ poster posting in favor of any policy that can plausibly be dubbed ‘Left of Center’ (which on a site that bills itself as ‘Left of Center’ pretty much means all posters on everything except perhaps for Rusty on Health Care) then you can expect CoRev to make the best case he can against you.
CoRev is a partisan advocate in much the same way as a lawyer advocating for his client, or given his general level of skill on most topics, in much the same way as a High School participant in competitive debate. And what you rarely see at trial and NEVER see in forensic competitive debate is the debater just putting down his note cards and saying “Hey I am convinced! Let’s call it a day!” Nope the rules and the practice are to just to go down with your ship.
Now it is certainly possible to get a particular advocate, whether lawyer or debater, to abandon a particular line of argumentation when it is clear that the judge and jury is just not buying it. But that mostly means switching to Plan B and then C as necessary because the object of the exercise is not to come to the strongest truth value but instead to win.
As such asking CoRev what his beef is with any particular fact or conclusion is kind of a waste of time. Because if you can’t say anthing else about CoRev you can say “He is not quitter, he takes a licking and comes up ticking”. And the way to get past the frustration is to understand that you may be responding to CoRev but in actuality you are addressing the jury. And that at best he might just run out of arguments and citations C, D, E, and F and rest his case. Which doesn’t mean that he would actually concede. The closest thing to an admission of defeat is silence.
As I told Dan in regards to another similar commenter “Trolls offer teaching moments. Until they lose it totally.” Which happens.
Run, I don’t see where MAGI does anything other than standardize AGI across the 50 states. Can you point me to where the ACA caps annual costs to $6,000 to $12,000. The actual plans I have studied show deductibles and co-pays in this range for bronze plans without even including the annual premium.
If there is such a limit, who pays the difference for these plans?
CoRev:
“Out of pocket” costs are capped the first year at an ~$6,000 for individuals and ~$12,000 for families. Premiums can not exceed 9.5% of income which is calculated on a Modified Adjusted Growth Income. MAGI is lower than AGI typically. In any case insurance companies scamming with high premiums will fall prey to the MLR and will have to rebate the overcharging they do with premiums.
This stuff can be found on the KFF website and is easy to find.
Bruce,
CoRev provides strong counterpoint to the doctrinaire Liberalism of this site. Over the years he has been a lot more prescient on the issues than you have been. The fact that you seek to marginalize him with personal attack means you can’t hang with him in debate.
Thanks Sammy. I was just going to ignore his rant.
Tun, I finally found the statement on KFF, and it appears that my question is not answered. KFF explains: Cost-Sharing: How much patients must pay out-of-pocket for covered services…” seems to cap the co-pay and deductibles, but not the premiums, which was my point.
Further questions arise when we compare the before and after policy costs. Is this cap on average an increase over before individual/family policies. Moreover are the premiums now higher, and how much.
Going to Healthcare.gov is the only way to get actual values, and until these actual values are readily available decisions will be deferred. I also suspect the multiple stories about sticker shock to be true, and will slow acceptance, especially for the young and healthier segments.
My original point has been validated. Using representative numbers does not get us to reality for possible users.
“Navigators” who not only lie but are committing federal crimes!
Great system, Mr Waldmann..
This is the single worst piece of crap pass by CONgress yet there are those whom can not nor will not admit to it….
Corev:
Don’t be silly. You are discussing this wth someone who knows far more than you are anyone else on Angry Bear.
“As background, PPACA restricts out-of-pocket (OOP) maximum limits for non-grandfathered group health plans (including both small and large fully insured plans sold inside and outside the exchanges and self-insured plans) to $6,350 for single coverage and $12,700 for family coverage (those amounts will be adjusted in future years). PPACA also restricts the annual deductible amount for small fully insured group plans (both inside and outside the exchanges) to $2,000 and $4,000 for single and family coverage, respectively. Both limits apply for plan years beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2014” http://www.mha-ins.com/news-updates/more-news-update/june-2013/july-2013/august-2013/m.blog/348/delay-of-ppaca-cost-sharing-limits
Are you fat? You are pretty damn lazy
The real deductions are all of the lies told about BarrockOcare, Mr Run…
Can you denounce BOCO?
BTW, I am fat like Mayor Ford and lazy like most of your welfare clients..