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Does “ACA health insurance” classification used here include everyone who buys insurance on their own who are not employed by a large-enough company or on Medic
by jasonthorsness 1y ago
Does “ACA health insurance” classification used here include everyone who buys insurance on their own who are not employed by a large-enough company or on Medicare/medicaid?
The job-based insurance system in USA is so bogus.
- brandonb 1y agoYep -- ACA health insurance refers to the individual market.
- crowbahr 1y agoIt's kinda hard to tell in the article but it seems specifically to apply to subsidized ACA purchases. There are market rate purchases on the ACA site too - I don't expect those will go up. They're already ruinously expensive.
- lapcat 1y agoEvery plan is market rate. There is no distinction between subsidized plans and market rate plans. The individual subsidies simply reduce the cost of the marketplace plan for those who financially qualify for subsidies. Premiums for all plans have been going up basically every year, even for those who don't qualify for any subsidies.
- DennisP 1y agoSubsidies are going away but they're raising the unsubsidized rates because of that. This is the key paragraph: > If healthy people opt out, the insurance pool is left with those who cost insurance companies more — people who can't go without health insurance because of chronic conditions or expensive medications. "That's why insurance companies are going ahead and charging a higher premium, with the expectation that the market is going to get sicker next year
- jhfdbkofdchk 1y agoOnly the plans you buy through the state marketplaces.
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y agoI've never dealt with it before personally, are there other places you can buy plans as an individual? How do the prices compare?
- ceejayoz 1y agohttps://www.healthcare.gov/ https://www.healthcare.gov/ Prices are rough these days, because Republicans later removed the individual mandate. The system was never gonna survive that; it changes the economics entirely.
- pitaj 1y agoYep the biggest problem with the ACA was that it doubled down on health insurance as a benefit of employment, when it should have taken steps to transition everyone off of employer provided plans.
- lalaland1125 1y agoIt would be a political disaster to transition people off their employer plans. The short term effect would be an increase in costs but no increase in pay for most people.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoWith a small tweak it would have the opposite effect. Just mandate that employers must add what they previously paid in health insurance to people's salary. So it would look like significant pay raises to a substantial portion of the populace. I bet that would be popular.
- pitaj 1y agoI don't know if you would even need to mandate it. Stop mandating it, and start taxing all benefits as income, and you remove the biggest incentive for employers for pay for them.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThat would suck for employees. They just effectively got an effective decrease in pay. A switch from employer-pay to government-pay should be a no-op for employees with employer health insurance. But in a naive scheme, it isn't. The burden for paying for health insurance moves from the employer to the employee (through increased taxes). The employer benefits because they stop paying for health insurance, the employee pays the costs. Voters, who are mostly employees, would hate it. OTOH, an on-paper pay raise for employees that doesn't cost the employer anything? That'll be much more politically palatable. "Both your taxes and your salary go up 10%" is a lot more palatable than "Your taxes go up 10%".
- skybrian 1y agoNo, not everyone. For example, you can buy health insurance from Kaiser either through the ACA marketplace or directly. But the ACA has tax credits that you wouldn’t get if buying directly.