 |
|
Hey ras, looks like it needs just a tiny bit of tweaking.
Posted on: August 15, 2016 at 08:08:01 CT
GA Tiger MU
Posts:
252406
Member For:
26.26 yrs
Level:
User
M.O.B. Votes:
0
(After obozo illegally made numerous changes on his own to attempt to fix some of this monstrosity.) Thanks demlibs. You ****ing idiots.
ObamaCare sticker shock will get worse in years to come, too
Who could have predicted this? Well, pretty much anyone familiar with risk pools, price signals, and the cost of government mandates — in other words, all the people that Democrats ignored while imposing ObamaCare on a hostile electorate.
But that’s just the beginning. Once the government ends a backstop for insurance companies known as the “risk corridor” program, the escalating costs of providing care will fall directly on consumers. University of Minnesota’s Stephen Parente, a professor of health finance, warns in the Wall Street Journal that the big bill will come due soon enough:
According to the rate requests posted on Healthcare.gov, nearly every state has multiple plans that are facing a more than 10% premium increase. Many plans—including some offered by state-market leaders—could see hikes of more than 30%, 40% or even 50%. Though most of these requests have not been approved, nor have all of the rate hikes that are less than 10% been unveiled, it is undeniable that millions of Americans are facing double-digit premium increases for health insurance next year.
For the first time since the law went into effect three years ago, insurers are basing their rate-hike requests on more than a year of data. For 2014 plans, they had to make educated guesses on how to price their never-before-sold ACA-compliant plans. For 2015 estimates, insurers had about six months of information to work with, and the final average premium increase was 5.4%. Now that insurers have a more complete picture, it is clear that costs are increasing much faster than anticipated.
It’s only going to get worse after 2016, as I’ve written in these pages, when two de facto bailouts for insurance companies expire. Through “risk corridors,” taxpayers are on the hook for patients who spend more on health care than insurers predicted. Through “reinsurance,” taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the most-expensive patients—those who make more than $70,000 in claims in 2015. Thanks to these two programs, insurance companies are able to artificially lower their premiums for consumers—by between 10%-15% in 2014, according to CMS—while charging the taxpayer for their losses. Reinsurance alone cost taxpayers $7.9 billion in 2014.
But consumers will pick up that tab once these programs disappear at the end of 2016. Health insurers are aware of this fact, and it’s in their interest to avoid the negative attention—and angry customers—that dramatic premium increases will cause. They thus have an incentive to spread out the coming hikes over both 2016 and 2017, rather than confine them to next year.
After 2017, the annual increases should shrink to 3-6%, but the damage will have already been done. The cost arc will bring its own kind of political and fiscal death spiral within a few years, Parente predicts:
By 2023, I estimate that the average family plan could be 61% more expensive than it is in 2015, with individual plans only one or two percentage points behind. These increases are so high that direct taxpayer subsidies to consumers are unlikely to keep up. So the cost, both financially and politically, will become increasingly intolerable.
Let’s remember two points on that argument. One, Barack Obama and the Democrats actually pegged contribution for subsidized health insurance to a percentage of salary, which means that the subsidies will have to get paid — and that will sink the program into a massively deep ocean of red ink. Two, people making above 400% of the poverty line won’t get subsidies at all, and they will get very, very angry at the massive cost increases in health-insurance premiums and the tax increases that will be necessary to cover subsidies they don’t get.
On top of that, most of the people who get insurance won’t see any benefit from the costly comprehensive insurance they’re forced to buy. That’s because the deductibles are so high that most care will come out of their pockets, along with the skyrocketing premiums. WCPO in Cincinnati offers a look at how the “low $50 co-pay” has vanished in ObamaCare plans, and how that impacts consumers when they actually need medical care — especially through emergency rooms:
ObamaCare sticker shock will get worse in years to come, too
Who could have predicted this? Well, pretty much anyone familiar with risk pools, price signals, and the cost of government mandates — in other words, all the people that Democrats ignored while imposing ObamaCare on a hostile electorate.
But that’s just the beginning. Once the government ends a backstop for insurance companies known as the “risk corridor” program, the escalating costs of providing care will fall directly on consumers. University of Minnesota’s Stephen Parente, a professor of health finance, warns in the Wall Street Journal that the big bill will come due soon enough:
According to the rate requests posted on Healthcare.gov, nearly every state has multiple plans that are facing a more than 10% premium increase. Many plans—including some offered by state-market leaders—could see hikes of more than 30%, 40% or even 50%. Though most of these requests have not been approved, nor have all of the rate hikes that are less than 10% been unveiled, it is undeniable that millions of Americans are facing double-digit premium increases for health insurance next year.
For the first time since the law went into effect three years ago, insurers are basing their rate-hike requests on more than a year of data. For 2014 plans, they had to make educated guesses on how to price their never-before-sold ACA-compliant plans. For 2015 estimates, insurers had about six months of information to work with, and the final average premium increase was 5.4%. Now that insurers have a more complete picture, it is clear that costs are increasing much faster than anticipated.
It’s only going to get worse after 2016, as I’ve written in these pages, when two de facto bailouts for insurance companies expire. Through “risk corridors,” taxpayers are on the hook for patients who spend more on health care than insurers predicted. Through “reinsurance,” taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the most-expensive patients—those who make more than $70,000 in claims in 2015. Thanks to these two programs, insurance companies are able to artificially lower their premiums for consumers—by between 10%-15% in 2014, according to CMS—while charging the taxpayer for their losses. Reinsurance alone cost taxpayers $7.9 billion in 2014.
But consumers will pick up that tab once these programs disappear at the end of 2016. Health insurers are aware of this fact, and it’s in their interest to avoid the negative attention—and angry customers—that dramatic premium increases will cause. They thus have an incentive to spread out the coming hikes over both 2016 and 2017, rather than confine them to next year.
After 2017, the annual increases should shrink to 3-6%, but the damage will have already been done. The cost arc will bring its own kind of political and fiscal death spiral within a few years, Parente predicts:
By 2023, I estimate that the average family plan could be 61% more expensive than it is in 2015, with individual plans only one or two percentage points behind. These increases are so high that direct taxpayer subsidies to consumers are unlikely to keep up. So the cost, both financially and politically, will become increasingly intolerable.
Let’s remember two points on that argument. One, Barack Obama and the Democrats actually pegged contribution for subsidized health insurance to a percentage of salary, which means that the subsidies will have to get paid — and that will sink the program into a massively deep ocean of red ink. Two, people making above 400% of the poverty line won’t get subsidies at all, and they will get very, very angry at the massive cost increases in health-insurance premiums and the tax increases that will be necessary to cover subsidies they don’t get.
On top of that, most of the people who get insurance won’t see any benefit from the costly comprehensive insurance they’re forced to buy. That’s because the deductibles are so high that most care will come out of their pockets, along with the skyrocketing premiums. WCPO in Cincinnati offers a look at how the “low $50 co-pay” has vanished in ObamaCare plans, and how that impacts consumers when they actually need medical care — especially through emergency rooms:
Please explain why this message is being reported.
MESSAGE THREAD
Hey ras, looks like it needs just a tiny bit of tweaking. - GA Tiger MU - 8/15 08:08:01
-