Saturday I got a letter from my health insurance company. It told me all about the new benefits I have because of Healthcare Reform.
Things I didn't know I needed, but Obama says I do.
On Monday I got another letter from my health insurance company,
It says I have a 7.6% premium increase.
Coincidence?
Nah, increased benefits cost more.
Mikek
PS. I have a grandfathered in policy, so, some benefits do not start until September or at policy renewal. Ya think I can expect another increase when the rest of the benefits start? We are so lucky to have such a caring president ;-{
Last fall I had to change policies becasue the premiums on my 'grandfathered' policy went up so much. I called my agent, discussed options, and took an increase in my deductible to make my plan affordable.
Then, a month later, I received my first bill on the new policy, and it was the same as my policy before changing it!
Seems the insurance company pulled a double whammy. Not only were they raising all the policies by 18%, they also went and 'reclassified' my region to a new premium level! Unfortunately, the agent didn't know about the 'reclassification' when he was preparing my changes, hence the 'misquote' on my premiums.
So, what could I do? I changed insurance companies, and went directly to the internet to get my policy, dumping my agent. What good is he, anyway, if he doesn't know about announced rate changes!
Exactly. Without delving into Obamacare and just how it's going to be financed (clearly it does require immense amounts of new money, with some split between insurance premiums going up, taxes gong up, etc.), a 7.6% increase is very much in-line with how much many insureres were bumping their rates up for the past handful of years even before Obama was in office.
Jim's 20% is arguably more directly related to Obamacare.
Indeed, it was the typical 5-10% premium increase for years in a row that likely helped Obamacare pass. Of course, whether or not Obamacare will actually help or is worth the price is an entirely different, hotly-debated topic.
I had an insurance agent years ago who never kept up on changes. All she did was send birthday cards every year. I found a cheaper plan on my own and signed up directly with Blue Shield. I had to return (refuse) two more birthday cards before they stopped coming.
Meanwhile my medical insurance costs me 127.30 euro per month - $184.32 at the current rate of exchange. I've got to pay the first 150 euro of what my prescriptions cost per year, but I get some of that back.
Americans keep on forgetting that our "socialised" system (actually Bismark's national insurance scheme) costs - per head - about 2/3's of what Americans pay and provides everybody with same high quality of health care that only insured Americans get to enjoy.
Obamacare is a small step in the right direction, but it's going to take a while before the reforms start purging the money-guzzling parasites that make your system needlessly expensive.
And don't tell me that a higher proportion of Brits with diabetes end up dead than American's with diabetes - for a start the British system really is socialised, and significantly cheaper than the German, French and Dutch systems which really do provide top class health care, so it isn't all that relevant, and quite separately, the British, not being as obese as their American counter-parts, are much less likely to go down with type 2 diabetes, which is easy to treat and rarely kills anybody, so that a higher proportion of British diabetics suffer from type 1 (early onset) diabetes which is harder to treat, and often kills the people who suffer from it.
But you are a veteran, and get a government subsidised service. My premium is one that any other legal resident of the Netherland could get.
It's certainly a very small step in that direction - the money- guzzling vested interests spent a lot of money on misleading advertising to minimise that kind of change - but it does move you agood bit closer to universal health care.
You couldn't tell me anything - you don't know enough, and what you do know is mostly wrong anyway. That doesn't make me dense in any sense except that what I know is a solid and consistent collection of information, where your prejudices are loosely woven collection of myths that you have been fed by a bunch of people who've seen fit to mislead you for their own advantage.
I could call you a light-weight, but that has implications of agility, which is not your thing - tattered comes closer to the mark.
People also forget that Europeans are poorer than Americans, so it's no wonder Americans have more money to spend on health care. these fractions are in roughly equal proportion.
Obamacare won't help at all. It will most likely make it worse. And it's not like we couldn't have modeled off the Swiss, who did this exact same thing in the '90s.
All they had to do was remove the restrictions on interstate provision of health insurance.
That sort of comparison is usually deeply flawed. The NHS is one way. It's anything but perfect, but in many ways it is better than the US system.
Reasonable people will just drop their insurance altogether and pay the $750 or whatever. When they need insurance, Obama requires insurers to take 'em.
Actually quite a lot smarter, but you haven't the wit to perceive the difference.=A0
Sorry - I was confusing you with Mike Terrell. Unfair to both of you, of course, but do you share comparable levels of ignorance.
Since you still have a job, the interesting question in your case is not how much you pay, but how much your employer pays on your behalf. If you weren't stupid you have realised that his was relevant. Of, if someone had pointed this out to you, you are mendacious enough to have suppressed the point.
I do - my premium (along with everybody elses) cover 45% of the costs of the system. The reamining 55% comes from governemnt collected payroll tax.
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I'm retired, and get a Dutch old age pension and an earnings related pension based on the years that I actually worked in the Netherlands. This does make me a drain on society - if not a a very large one. I'm entitled to similar pensions from the UK where I paid national insurance and worked for quite a lot longer, but I've deferred getting them until I turn 70 which means that I will get quite a bit more per month when they do start. My wife will have to retire from her primary job at the that time, which will reduce our income to some extent, and my UK pensions will make up some of the gap.
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one.
How? Normally, introducing a governemnt bureaucracy into the mix does add extra administrative costs, but the independent insurance companies that provide US health insurance have extraordinarily high administrative costs, and the government component is unlikely to be quite as ridiculously expensive. For one thing, they won't be taking money from the people they insure to buy expensive publicity campaigns to tell the public that they aren't a bunch of money guzzling leeches.
money.
Or - to put it another way - I'm not silly enough to have swallowed the propaganda that has fooled you.
Not all Europeans are poorer than Americans - Luxembourg definitely isn't, and Switzerland has a higher median income - but they all spend less on health care per head than the Americans, and still achieve significantly better life expectancies
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Candaian academics - amongst others - have dug into the details, and the biggest single difference is that the Americans devote a lot more of their nominally "health care spending" on running the insurance comapnies that collect and dispense the money.
It's one more American boondoggle - like their defence budget - where special interest groups have managed to get divert a lot of the tax- payer's money into their own pockets.
That particular comparison was - obviously - flawed. The US medical insurance industry was busy frightening the US voter at the time, and they were clearly hard-pressed to find anecdotes that showed the US system in a good light.
No. What was relevant was what *I* pay. You stated what *you* pay, moron. Of course you don't see any reason to tell everyone what a free-loader you are.
AlwaysWrong.
Which you don't pay, STOOPID!
A welfare queen in a welfare state. Won't last.
Many ways, but all you have to do is look at the premium costs to see what it's doing.
Wrong! Of course you don't listen to anyone here, but that's been debunked
*many* times.
Clueless.
No, let me say it another way; YOU'RE TOO STUPID FOR WORDS! There, did you get it that time?
The only reason in the past to waste money on premiums was to avoid bankruptcy in the event of a catastrophic health problem. Same problem with auto insurance.
Why would an illegal waste money on auto insurance?
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