Do you have an extra $3000 in your pocket? Then, vote for Pres. Obama

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http://news.investors.com/092412-626848-health-premiums-up-3065-obama-vowed-2500-cut.aspx

During his first run for president, Barack Obama made one very specific promise to voters: He would cut health insurance premiums for families by $2,500, and do so in his first term. But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama's vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey. Premiums for employer-provided family coverage rose $3,065 24% from 2008 to 2012, the Kaiser survey found. Even if you start counting in 2009, premiums have climbed $2,370. What's more, premiums climbed faster in Obama's four years than they did in the previous four under President Bush, the survey data show. There's no question about what Obama was promising the country, since he repeated it constantly during his 2008 campaign. In a debate with Sen. John McCain, for example, Obama said "the only thing we're going to try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed onto you. And we estimate we can cut the average family's premium by about $2,500 per year." At a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio, in February 2008, Obama promised that "We are going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2,500. We will not wait 20 years from now to do it, or 10 years from now to do it. We will do it by the end of my first term as president." 2008 Promises, 2012 Reality To back that up, Obama pointed to a memo drafted by Harvard professors (and unpaid campaign advisers), which claimed that investing in health care IT, cutting administrative bloat, and improving management of chronic diseases would cut health costs by $140 billion a year. That would translate into $2,500 in premium savings for families. But those projections were wildly optimistic, overestimating potential savings from IT, making big assumptions about disease management, and ignoring the fact that past government interventions have always increased health care administrative costs. Meanwhile, the health reform law Obama signed in March 2010 has pushed up insurance costs. In 2011, premiums spiked 9.5%, and many in the industry blame ObamaCare for at least part of it. Premiums climbed another 4.5% in 2012, Kaiser found. And ObamaCare will continue to fuel health premium inflation. First, the law piles on new coverage mandates. It requires insurance companies to provide 100% coverage for various types of preventive care, bans lifetime coverage limits, extends parents' coverage to offspring up to 26 years old, and requires plans to meet certain "medical loss ratios." Coming up are rules on "essential standard benefits," limits on deductibles, bans on annual spending caps, and much more.

Wake up, y'all.

[Nova]

A socialist approach for healthcare is always going to raise costs. Let the middle class and rich pay more tax and help out the unfortunate ones. Go Obama... you have my support!

[Clarke]

Gas prices have gone up too. In Dec 2008 it was so low. Now its so high. Its Obama's fault. I understand your pain

[punjabi_khota]

Can anyone take a guess on how high the rates will be when Romney provides care upto 26 yr olds AND pre-existing medical conditions, WITHOUT the mandate. (Assuming that is his latest stand, please correct me if he has changed position in last 2 days). Cricaddict, you go first. Common sense tells me that part of the premium rise is in anticipation of the whole healthcare law being implemented by 2014-15. If Romney is claiming he can keep the good stuff of Obamacare without mandate AND keep premiums low AND not raise govt. spending on healthcare, I will be first one to worship the wonderful economics/math behind that magic. P.S.: I am ignoring the whole Romney's latest 'oh we have emergency rooms' thing for now.

[anotherhawkeye]

^ what he said.

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Can anyone take a guess on how high the rates will be when Romney provides care upto 26 yr olds AND pre-existing medical conditions, WITHOUT the mandate. (Assuming that is his latest stand, please correct me if he has changed position in last 2 days). Cricaddict, you go first. Common sense tells me that part of the premium rise is in anticipation of the whole healthcare law being implemented by 2014-15. If Romney is claiming he can keep the good stuff of Obamacare without mandate AND keep premiums low AND not raise govt. spending on healthcare, I will be first one to worship the wonderful economics/math behind that magic. P.S.: I am ignoring the whole Romney's latest 'oh we have emergency rooms' thing for now.

Ho hum ... the usual "Romney can't do it" comment with no intelligent commentary on the issue itself. The article was not talking about the mandate. So, there goes that. Romney can't do everything that the PPACA wants to do without inflicting significant holes in our pockets. Nor can "He who parted the oceans and cooled the earth." Not unless one of them honestly address issues at the front-end of care (cost of healthcare delivery, malpractice law-reform etc.). The goal of my OP (and another thread that I started last week about how PPACA initiatives are much more expensive than projected and are coming crashing down) was to show you all the unintended consequences of passing massive laws with little thought to (a) how one is going to pay for it and (b) unintended consequences like rise in premiums. I must thank you for pointing out that all that was promised would not be possible without increasing premiums, taxing people more etc. But that's exactly what President Obama promised when he claimed that that premiums would go down by $2500. And, of course, everyone bought it because of how well he articulated his lie? Making promises one can't keep (or has no intention of keeping) seems to be Obama's M.O. I take it that you are rich and can absorb a 20% p.a. increase in health insurance premiums each year. I cannot. My premium has gone up 44% from 2010 and I am not signing up for myself this coming year. Instead, I will donate $600 or whatever tax to the IRS. Waiting for the obligatory ..... "we all need to make sacrifices so others ...." post.

[punjabi_khota]

I think you are being dishonest here. The law is not even in effect yet in its entirety, the mandates haven't even kicked in and from what I understand, the whole point of getting most people insurance, free yearly check ups etc is to ramp up the preventive side of healthcare. It makes sense to me, but I can see that things like these will take some time to start working. More people in the insurance loop reduces the number of people in emergency rooms, but it is obvious that 1-2 years is too little a time frame to see those effects. No one is claiming that Obamacare is perfect, but it is definitely a step in right direction, as far as I am concerned. It makes absolutely zero sense to have 60 mill people without insurance in this country. If only the other side could pitch in with constructive things to add on to Obamacare, rather than their stupid pitch of repealing it, while at the same time praising the good stuff. As for me, I live in MA, and have seen firsthand the benefits of Romneycare for those around me. He DID build that. :hatsoff:

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I think you are being dishonest here. The law is not even in effect yet in its entirety, the mandates haven't even kicked in and from what I understand, the whole point of getting most people insurance, free yearly check ups etc is to ramp up the preventive side of healthcare. It makes sense to me, but I can see that things like these will take some time to start working. More people in the insurance loop reduces the number of people in emergency rooms, but it is obvious that 1-2 years is too little a time frame to see those effects. No one is claiming that Obamacare is perfect, but it is definitely a step in right direction, as far as I am concerned. It makes absolutely zero sense to have 60 mill people without insurance in this country. If only the other side could pitch in with constructive things to add on to Obamacare, rather than their stupid pitch of repealing it, while at the same time praising the good stuff. As for me, I live in MA, and have seen firsthand the benefits of Romneycare for those around me. He DID build that. :hatsoff:

As I pointed out on the other Obamacare thread, it has gotten off to such a rocky start and is based on such wildly optimistic projections that one wonders if the other parts can be implemented at all. And I am not claiming that it has no good elements. Unfortunately, the way the legislative process works, the only way to keep the good parts while eliminating the bad is to repeal and start all over. Which is exactly why I keep harping on the massive size, scope and expense of Obamacare. And second, it just does not address healthcare delivery costs and tort reform. That was simply too glaring of an omission.

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Gas prices have gone up too. In Dec 2008 it was so low. Now its so high. Its Obama's fault. I understand your pain

Nah ... gas prices are up because of Dick Cheney's greed. :-)! Are you denying that Obamacare has contributed to increased premiums? Regardless, the main point of the thread was to point out that Obama made wild, hollow promises based on wild, flawed predictions that he had no chance (or intention?) of keeping. "I will decrease premiums by $3000." Bust.

[Nova]

^ So what to do? I thought universal healthcare was a good idea. All this reading is just confusing me even more. The rich always want more tax cuts. :hitler: What is Romney going to do about it? Repealing Obamacare is not going to be easy if he comes to power. Can anyone give me some solid reasons why I should vote for Romney? I am a proponent for healthcare for the uninsured with per-existing conditions. I don't think Romney will take care of this. His idea of providing health care to the poor, is to send them to the emergency room.

[Clarke]

Nah ... gas prices are up because of Dick Cheney's greed. :-)! Are you denying that Obamacare has contributed to increased premiums? Regardless, the main point of the thread was to point out that Obama made wild, hollow promises based on wild, flawed predictions that he had no chance (or intention?) of keeping. "I will decrease premiums by $3000." Bust.

Fair to target the President on promises. Here's a laundry list though of what you could create threads on until Nov 4th, published the day after our posts and includes what you and i said: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/27/opinion/bennett-dont-vote-for-obama/index.html

[Desi Cartman]

^ So what to do? I thought universal healthcare was a good idea. All this reading is just confusing me even more. The rich always want more tax cuts. :hitler: What is Romney going to do about it? Repealing Obamacare is not going to be easy if he comes to power. Can anyone give me some solid reasons why I should vote for Romney? I am a proponent for healthcare for the uninsured with per-existing conditions. I don't think Romney will take care of this. His idea of providing health care to the poor, is to send them to the emergency room.

Here is some personal experience for you, in Aus an avg family of 3-4 pays under 2k every year for Medicare and ALL treatments are covered by Medicare. One can sign up for private health insurance when they start making more than 150k with as little as 60 bucks a month for individual and 150 for family to get 5 star care as a pvt patient. Now all this BS that I have been hearing that giving people medical is socialism is totally retarded. It works in most countries and I agree that it may mean delays in non urgent treatments for which you can sign up for pvt healthcare or wait for a little more, which is ok as it's not essential. At first when I went to the doctors here and then took my daughter to hospital, I almost felt offended by how it's not about paitents health but about the kind if insurance one has, I had to pay $200 in a hospital as my daughter had an ear infection and no doctor wanted to see us as you need to belong to a clinic and the stupidity if paying 200 bucks for 5 mins at a hospital "clinic" ( yes no emergency ) is OTT. What can a poor man do ?

[Clarke]

What can a poor man do ?

Breaking bad is another option.

[Crookbond]

V_r_chMwpDk

[Desi Cartman]

Breaking bad is another option.

Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance, people -- we -- if someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and -- and die. We -- we pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.

wait till you are about to die and then go to emergency is the plan :hatsoff:

[punjabi_khota]

Yo Cricaddict, I won $3000 in lottery, but this bit of news is making me hard to chose between Obama and Romney: The GOP wants voters to think that only the rich would be affected by its loophole closing. “And don’t forget that the higher-income people have a disproportionate amount of the loopholes that they use,” Mr. Ryan said. Well, actually, no. Higher-income people reap a “disproportionate amount” of the benefit of lower rates on capital gains and dividends — households earning more than $200,000 a year receive 90 percent of the benefit. But the Romney-Ryan plan would leave that break in place. Most of the remaining major tax breaks flow primarily to households earning $200,000 or less. For example, more than two-thirds of the benefit of the deduction for home mortgage interest goes to those making less than $200,000 a year.

[punjabi_khota]

In case cricaddict is still around and has some dollars to spare, Even the studies that Romney has cited to claim his plan adds up still show he would need to raise middle class taxes. Rosen's paper did find that families making more than $100,000 per year would have to pay $81 billion more in taxes under Romney's tax plan, a 12 percent increase. But his paper did not explicitly say whether these families, whose incomes he assumes would be rising, would actually pay a higher tax rate. This Rosen guy is the one Romney cites as one of the 6 studies.

[punjabi_khota]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/24/wonkbook-some-very-good-news-for-obamacare/ Wonkbook: Some very good news for Obamacare Obamacare got some very good news on Thursday. In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that a medium-level “silver” plan — which covers 70 percent of a beneficiary’s expected health costs — on the California health exchange would cost $5,200 annually. More recently, a report from the consulting firm Milliman predicted it would carry a $450 monthly premium. Yesterday, we got the real numbers. And they’re lower than anyone thought. As always, Sarah Kliff has the details. The California exchange will have 13 insurance options, and the heavy competition appears to be driving down prices. The most affordable silver-level plan is charging $276-a-month. The second-most affordable plan is charging $294. And all this is before subsidies. Someone making twice the poverty line, say, will only pay $104-a-month. Sparer plans are even cheaper. A young person buying the cheapest “bronze”-level plan will pay $172 — and that, again, is before any subsidies. California is a particularly important test for Obamacare. It’s not just the largest state in the nation. It’s also one of the states most committed to implementing Obamacare effectively. Under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — remember how that really happened? — California was the first state to begin building its insurance exchanges. The state’s outreach efforts are unparalleled. Its insurance regulators are working hard to bring in good plans and make sure they’re playing fair. If California can’t make the law work, perhaps no one can. But if California can make the law work, it shows that others can, too. And perhaps others will. We’re beginning to see competition drive down proposed rates in some exchanges around the country. Remember Maryland, where CareFirst grabbed headlines with a shocking 25 percent proposed increase in rates? More plans have streamed in with lower bids. Kaiser Permanente, for instance, is only increasing its rates next year by 4.3 percent — a modest increase that will make CareFirst’s proposal almost impossible to sustain. My guess is when the exchange actually opens in October, CareFirst will have dropped its price substantially. If they don’t, then Kaiser and others will grab all the market share. The way this competition can drive down rates is already evident in Oregon. There, one insurer came in with monthly premium costs in the $169 range, while other insurers asked to charge more than $400. But then, seeing what their competitors were charging, two insurers came back to the state’s regulators and asked if they could refile at lower rates. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be competitive in the exchange. The Obama administration was ecstatic to see this: It’s exactly what they’re hoping will happen across the country. Of course, California and Oregon are managing Obamacare particularly well. But the state-by-state nature of the Affordable Care Act creates really unusual political dynamics around how the law is perceived in its first year. Imagine it’s the end of 2014. California now boasts a working, near-universal health-care system. Nothing perfect, but clearly a a success after the first year of implementation. Texas, meanwhile, is a bit of a mess. They didn’t allow the Medicaid expansion so the state’s poorest residents got nothing. They didn’t help with the exchanges, or the outreach, so there aren’t many choices, and premiums aren’t as low one might hope. Viewed in isolation, Texas’s problems would be deadly for the law. But viewed next to California, they might mainly be a problem for the political class in Texas, which has failed to implement a clearly workable law.

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Depends. Sarah Kliff or Avik Roy? http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/05/30/rate-shock-in-california-obamacare-to-increase-individual-insurance-premiums-by-64-146/

One of the most serious flaws with Obamacare is that its blizzard of regulations and mandates drives up the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own. This problem will be especially acute when the law’s main provisions kick in on January 1, 2014, leading many to worry about health insurance “rate shock.” Last week, the state of California claimed that its version of Obamacare’s health insurance exchange would actually reduce premiums. “These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard,” boasted Peter Lee, executive director of the California exchange. But the data that Lee released tells a different story: Obamacare, in fact, will increase individual-market premiums in California by as much as 146 percent. Aetna CEO Bertolini: Get Ready for 'Rate Shock' as Some Health Insurance Premiums to Double in 2014 Avik Roy Avik Roy Contributor Insurance Analysts: Obamacare to Increase Out-of-Pocket Premium Costs, Despite Lavish Subsidies Avik Roy Avik Roy Contributor CMS on Obamacare's Health Insurance Exchanges: 'Let's Just Make Sure It's Not a Third-World Experience' Avik Roy Avik Roy Contributor Lee’s claims that there won’t be rate shock in California were repeated uncritically in some quarters. “Despite the political naysayers,” writes my Forbes colleague Rick Ungar, “the healthcare exchange concept appears to be working very well indeed in states like California.” A bit more analysis would have prevented Rick from falling for California’s sleight-of-hand. Here’s what happened. Last week, Covered California—the name for the state’s Obamacare-compatible insurance exchange—released the rates that Californians will have to pay to enroll in the exchange. “The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market,” the state said in a press release, “ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.” That’s the sentence that led to all of the triumphant commentary from the left. “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,” exulted Peter Lee. Except that Lee was making a misleading comparison. He was comparing apples—the plans that Californians buy today for themselves in a robust individual market—and oranges—the highly regulated plans that small employers purchase for their workers as a group. The difference is critical. Obamacare to double individual-market premiums If you’re a 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (That’s the median monthly premium across California’s 19 insurance rating regions.) The next cheapest plan, the “bronze” comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH), the average cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92. In other words, for the average 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent. Under Obamacare, only people under the age of 30 can participate in the slightly cheaper catastrophic plan. So if you’re 40, your cheapest option is the bronze plan. In California, the median price of a bronze plan for a 40-year-old male non-smoker will be $261. But on eHealthInsurance, the average cost of the five cheapest plans was $121. That is, Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent. For both 25-year-olds and 40-year-olds, then, Californians under Obamacare who buy insurance for themselves will see their insurance premiums double. Impact highest in Bay Area, Orange County, and San Diego In the map below, I illustrate the regional variations in Obamacare’s rate hikes. For each of the state’s 19 insurance regions, I compared the median price of the bronze plans offered on the exchange to the median price of the five cheapest plans on eHealthInsurance.com for the most populous zip code in that region. (eHealth offers more than 50 plans in the typical California zip code; focusing on the five cheapest is the fairest comparator to the exchanges, which typically offered three to six plans in each insurance rating region.) As you can see, Obamacare’s impact on 40-year-olds is steepest in the San Francisco Bay area, especially in the counties north of San Francisco, like Marin, Napa, and Sonoma. Also hard-hit are Orange and San Diego counties. According to Covered California, 13 carriers are participating in the state’s exchange, including Anthem Blue Cross (NYSE:WLP), Health Net (NYSE:HNT), Molina (NYSE:MOH), and Kaiser Permanente. So far, UnitedHealthCare (NYSE:UNH) and Aetna (NYSE:AET) have stayed out. Spinning a public-relations disaster It’s great that Covered California released this early the rates that insurers plan to charge on the exchange, as it gives us an early window into how the exchanges will work in a state that has an unusually competitive and inexpensive individual market for health insurance. But that’s the irony. The full rate report is subtitled “Making the Individual Market in California Affordable.” But Obamacare has actually doubled individual-market premiums in the Golden State. How did Lee and his colleagues explain the sleight-of-hand they used to make it seem like they were bringing prices down, instead of up? “It is difficult to make a direct comparison of these rates to existing premiums in the commercial individual market,” Covered California explained in last week’s press release, “because in 2014, there will be new standard benefit designs under the Affordable Care Act.” That’s a polite way of saying that Obamacare’s mandates and regulations will drive up the cost of premiums in the individual market for health insurance. But rather than acknowledge that truth, the agency decided to ignore it completely, instead comparing Obamacare-based insurance to a completely different type of insurance product, that bears no relevance to the actual costs that actual Californians face when they shop for coverage today. Peter Lee calls it a “home run.” It’s more like hitting into a triple play. Obama attacked insurers in 2010 for much smaller increases That Obamacare more than doubles insurance premiums for many Californians is especially ironic, given the political posturing of the President and his administration in 2010. In February of that year, Anthem Blue Cross announced that some groups (but not the majority) would face premium increases of as much as 39 percent. The White House and its allies in the blogosphere, cynically, claimed that these increases were due to greedy profiteering by the insurers, instead of changes in the underlying costs of the insured population. “These extraordinary increases are up to 15 times faster than inflation and threaten to make health care unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of Californians, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet in a difficult economy,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “[Anthem’s] strong financial position makes these rate increases even more difficult to understand.” The then-Democratic Congress called hearings. Even California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a Republican running for governor, decided to launch an investigation.

[Clarke]

House GOP to vote on Obamacare repeal - Vol. 37 :hatsoff: