Health Insurance

[Bob Cole]

Ned – For whatever reason, that link did not send me to a relevant story. Maybe the paywall interfered. I think I found the story you were referring to (Texas insurance rates skyrocketing). I did a search for the AP reporter’s name and found a bunch of informative stories. This seems to be his “beat.”

Ricardo Alonso­ Zaldivar

Thanks!

Bob C

[Ned Miller]

Oh! Here’s some others. I guess Wednesday the news hit that many ACA providers were going to raise rates big time:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/obamacare-worries-largest-texas-insurer-191310560.html

https://www.bizneworleans.com/June-2016/Insurance-Rates-Going-Up-New-Concerns-For-Obamacare/

https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/04/21/Get-Ready-Huge-Obamacare-Premium-Hikes-2017

and on and on. I’m a news junkie. My wife is a teacher protected by the union and I get the spousal option, is great insurance but not cheap either. I pay in the new school year $1060 per month for myself with the PPO plan, which I believe is just one down from the top-of-the-line plan.

My favorite line from The Big Short: People hate to think about bad things happening so they always underestimate their likelihood. Everyone thinks they’re covered until a major incident occurs. Then when the deductibles, copays and coinsurance bills come in, according to my bro and others, it’s very bad financial news. Helps to be dirt poor! All I care about is if something really major needs to be done, such as I need a brain transplant, that I can go downtown to one of the humongous teaching hospitals where the pros are, not these podunk suburban chains. That’s all I truly care about because of the horror stories I’ve heard and experienced. A broken toe I’ll check in here but I do not want a policy to save money and then I can’t “go downtown.”

But this is why I don’t want employees and partners. I don’t want employees because I don’t want to pay for their insurance, and I don’t want partners because I don’t want to split the profit.

Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com

[Bill Davis]

Want to know what’s REALLY scary?

Presumably over time, if Google, Apple, Tesla, etc have their way – we may eventually migrate to autonomous cars.

Who will be among the largest “losers” if that happens? If you said the INSURANCE Industry – give yourself a gold star.

All those carefully crafted “YOU CANT DRIVE UNLESS YOU PAY US, INDIVIDUALS” laws now on every states books? Bye bye.

That industry will be ROCKED like nothing since slide-rule makers got clocked by Texas Instruments.

Thank goodness people will always get sick – insurance companies have gotta make those massive profits somewhere……………sigh.

And so expect nothing but higher and higher and higher rates EVERYWHERE. I think it’s an industry rates binge now, in preparation for the future, – NOT, I suspect, because that reflects market forces or the actual cost of services – but because they have TONS of actuaries and prognosticators on their payrolls who can see exactly where these things are going.

Right now, regulation and legislation is ALL we can hope for to provide protection. And that means the slimy morass of Politics is all that’s left. Because the market forces have largely been gutted. If you don’t think so, good luck finding that great, cheap policy. Good luck getting Union help. Good luck getting government advocacy for consumer protections.

I noticed both those referenced articles came out of Red states just like mine. I personally have seen NOTHING out of any Red state governor that has tried to address this. If you have, please point it out. The governors who are trying to make something closer to single payer work ALL seem to be on the other team.

Oh well.

It’s just interesting, that’s all.

Creator of XinTwo – http://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Ned Miller]

Here’s a podcast with everything about the ACA you need to know, two experts interviewed, apolitical, from five days ago.

https://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2016/06/01/the-latest-on-the-affordable-care-act/

I forgot to mention and maybe this will educate some, I will be going on Medicare 7/18 and my private BCBS premiums will go from $1060 a month down to $350, so that’s a savings of $8520 which is a very significant savings! I had thought I may need to go onto the ACA for a few years and my research showed that if something very bad occurred health wise, I could lose a lot of money. A lot! The premiums would be less but not all the other expenses. Now looking forward the real danger is Long Term Care insurance which is now unaffordable. So all you forum members: Keep yourself healthy!

Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com