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From $479 to $2,800 a month for ACA health insurance next year
- toomuchtodo 1y agoCheaper to leave the country if you can.
- betaby 1y agoand go where?
- toomuchtodo 1y agoMexico or Europe, depending on your skills or pension income. /r/AmerExit on Reddit for more info.
- VonGuard 1y agoThe United States of Ferenginar
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cudder 1y agoEven the Ferengi are wiser I'm afraid. Rule of Acquisition #10: A dead customer can't buy as much as a live one.
- nielsbot 1y agoWe wouldn't have this problem if we have universal healthcare in America, no? The US system is so dumb not to mention inefficient.
- epistasis 1y agoUniversal healthcare doesn't change the overall cost. To a large degree, the ACA/Obamacare was a good stab at getting universal healthcare! The change in this article is about undoing universality, by changing the subsidies for those with lower income. To structurally reduce the fraction of GDP devoted to healthcare, we need to make far bigger changes. A lot of the setup right now is to subsidize those on Medicare by those on private insurance programs. The cross-subsidization goes very deep, and anything that might reduce costs also has the risk of undoing cross-subsidization. With half the country refusing to reform health care for the past 30 years, and the other half having their hands tied behind their back on trying to improve health care, we have built a gigantic overly complex system that's very hard to unwind.
- lazide 1y agoYup. Eventually it’ll likely be burned to the ground (uh, I mean ‘reformed’) but folks are trying to squeeze what they can out now.
- narrator 1y agoWhatever the problem with health care in America is, the solution is not more money. We already spend double what all other countries spend as a percent of GDP and we have worse outcomes. There are a lot of similar mysteries in America. For example, why does it cost a billion dollars a mile to do subways which is 20x almost everywhere else.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago> Universal healthcare doesn't change the overall cost. It can, at least to some degree. Every doctor's office has people who run through the insurance maze, trying to get services paid for. And every insurance company has people on the other side, trying to find ways to not pay for stuff. Having only one organization to deal with would simplify that; having one organization with clear, transparent rules would simplify it more.
- the_gastropod 1y ago> Universal healthcare doesn't change the overall cost I get the sense I'm probably preaching to the choir here. But, the U.S. spends almost 2x what comparable countries (with universal healthcare) spend on healthcare. And we get worse than average results on virtually every measure. This, of course, makes sense. When you're running healthcare as a for-profit business, part of our expenses are... profit to pay out shareholders. And advertisement budgets. And middlemen (insurance). And employees to do things like decline coverage. Medical employees to deal with insurance companies declining coverage. Etc. etc. There's a whole industry that only exists to support our private healthcare system that would cease to exist in a universal healthcare system.
- lazide 1y agoIt depends on what problem you’re referring too. Many socialized healthcare systems have huge backlogs right now. Ration on price. Or availability. Or quality. Eventually, every system ends up with one of the three. Sometimes 2.
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y agoMy Canadian father-in-law had to wait over a year before being able to see a neurologist about his suspected Parkinsons symptoms. Fortunately, he's well off enough that he was able to afford medical treatment in another country, but many people trapped in such systems are not.
- betaby 1y agoHalf of my work colleagues received health care abroad. Wait times in Quebec are insane. Yes, constant joint pain may be not 'life threatening' yet degrades quality of life significantly. Basically if you are not actively dying you can't get access to healthcare in Quebec.
- lurking_swe 1y agoJust to share a perspective from someone who used to live in New York… I had what I suspected was a mild concussion with some annoying symptoms at the time. I could see a neurologist within 3 days IF my schedule was flexible (it was not). I ended up getting seen 10 days later. a year is just crazy.
- XorNot 1y ago"Backlog" - there is never a moment that this isn't just wrong. I'm from Australia. If I want to "skip the line" I can just pay to do so. Private practice exists. People don't, because it's expensive and they can't afford it. This is exactly like the US, except in the US you just don't get healthcare at all and die instead. The "backlog" in any public healthcare system is a triage line. If you actually need care, you get it immediately. If you can live with it but keep it monitored, you might not for longer then is optimally comfortable if you can't afford private consults. In the US, again, you just don't get anything.
- danielmarkbruce 1y agoTry living in a few different countries. The US healthcare system is amazing if you have good insurance - really freaking amazing.
- Freedom2 1y agoI've lived in over 7 countries and the US healthcare system is by far the worst one I've personally experienced.
- danielmarkbruce 1y agoMaybe you didn't have good health insurance? If you have children or anything big happen, you want to be in major metro area of the US with broad network, expensive insurance. It's the best in the world, by miles.
- nielsbot 1y agoBut what about people in the US who don't have the good insurance? Should they not get healthcare?
- danielmarkbruce 1y agoI'm just describing what it's like if you have the right insurance and live in a big metro. There are a lot of takes on what the system should be...
- fzeroracer 1y agoI live in the US and have good insurance. Our healthcare system is garbage.
- lotsoweiners 1y agoPlease explain because it sounds like you might not have as good of insurance as you think. I have good insurance and pay basically nothing out of pocket beyond around $200 deductible.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoI like the idea of a public insurance option. Would bolt right onto our current system and help bring costs down.
- cj 1y agoWhat would a public insurance option involve? Do you mean insurance that's provided at-cost without a company profiting? Insurance companies are already required to spend at least 80% (or 85%) of the premiums they collect on paying out claims. If they spend less, they are required to give rebates / premium refunds to policy holders. It wouldn't be crazy to increase that percentage even more, since it's effectively a cap on the profit margin insurers are allowed to earn on premiums.
- Rebelgecko 1y agoIf a company's profits are capped at x% of the money they spend, aren't they incentivized to support higher medical costs?
- cj 1y agoIn theory, they'd be incentivized by the free market to provide the best coverage for the lowest cost to retain and get new customers. But not sure how well that holds up in practice.
- morkalork 1y agoThe universal healthcare system in many countries is like they said, a publicly funded and operated insurer. I can look in the government portal and see what each healthcare provider billed to the public system for example. One can also have their private insurance cover services or just pay out of pocket. But copying that part blindly in the USA is doomed to fail because along with the universal coverage, there are also strict regulations on what services can be offered privately, how much can be charged for services and what must be covered by private insurance (a fun example I experienced recently was my private insurance not wanting to cover a certain drug treatment; if one doesn't have insurance, the government will pay 100% for the drugs but if you do, they force the private insurer to cover the cost). All areas where there USA is lacking.
- betaby 1y ago> We wouldn't have this problem if we have universal healthcare in America, no? No. Try living in Quebec.
- wakawaka28 1y agoThe expense problem (which is overstated in the article) would just shift from premiums to taxes if there was "universal healthcare" in America. Besides that, a large part of the expenses comes from subsidizing drugs that get sold abroad for low prices. It's easy to whine about "dumb Americans" when your own country is subsidized by them
- chasd00 1y agoWhat it amounts to is a Covid era subsidy expiring. The article title makes it seem like ACA health insurance is going up 5x but in reality the expectation is 75%, this particular case must be an outlier. The person in the article even laughs it off since she turns 65 soon and will then switch to Medicare.
- Gregaros 1y ago> The person in the article even laughs it off since she turns 65 soon and will then switch to Medicare. You might be surprised how few Americans can ‘laugh off’ even a one-time payment increase of $2,300–let alone a monthly recurring one.
- the_gastropod 1y agoI'm also an "outlier", I guess. But I'm on a marketplace plan. Currently I pay $25 for my monthly premium. Next year it'll be $132. And I'm under 40.
- awongh 1y agoIs there any republican justification for this, other than, by the time people notice it will be too late / we will try to blame it on the other party? Are they expecting the states to step up and pay instead?
- cyanydeez 1y agoThey're expecting bondage and excuse to "crack down" where they wish. Think of republicans now as a party creating excuses to itch their desire to look at female genitals.
- nblgbg 1y agoJust blame Obama/Biden for it and move on ! I am not kidding that's what you will hear.
- softwaredoug 1y agoThe justification is the expiration of what they say is an emergency subsidy from the pandemic. I’m not saying that makes it good (IMO society would benefit from this subsidy being permanent). But that’s their justification.
- awongh 1y agoWere premiums that high pre-pandemic?
- RickJWagner 1y agoThe premiums were high, but reduced temporarily for people who otherwise would not get generous subsidies. The pandemic era extra funds are now expired, those people will now pay a price similar to what they paid pre pandemic. For the least wealthy people, the amount of subsidy provided will not change.
- slipperydippery 1y agoThey're setting the ACA up to "naturally" fail anyway, so this doesn't matter to them, or is even a step in the right direction. They kicked out one of its three "legs" (the "individual mandate") so this right-wing heritage foundation promoted healthcare scheme is now guaranteed to face a price death-spiral anyway, unless that changes. They gave up on repealing it, because it was so popular, and have settled for breaking it in ways that most folks will have trouble figuring out they should blame Republicans for (those chickens won't come home to roost for years, and I guarantee it's only a tiny minority of voters who understood the necessity of the mandate for the whole thing to work, anyway), so eventually it'll be popular to get rid of it.
- atonse 1y agoI still feel that something like Medicare for All should just be an issue for those that are all about free markets and entrepreneurship. Maybe there are millions in America that only keep their jobs for the health benefits rather than starting a 1-2 person business. It just seems so silly.
- cyanydeez 1y agoWell, there's two forces at work: 1. Capitalism never sleeps. 2. Current healthcare employs thousands of people who would be out of work in a medicare for all system. While #1 is a horrid excuse, #2 is what controls the real world.
- kingkawn 1y agothey’ll adjust
- slipperydippery 1y agoOur GDP would take a really bad hit if we stopped wasting 10+% of it overpaying for healthcare (a white-collar make-work jobs program—like, god, couldn't we just start up the CCC again? At least they built nice stuff that we're still enjoying... imagine what they could do with 10% or more of GDP!) I suspect this, plus other ways the US reports sheer waste as GDP to a much higher degree than most peer states, is the main reason folks report the US feeling a lot poorer than second-tier EU countries that on-paper have far lower GDP/capita, even with PPP adjustments. But the fake-healthcare-GDP is probably the single biggest culprit, being absolutely enormous.
- wqaatwt 1y ago> folks report the US feeling a lot poorer than second-tier EU countries How can they even tell that? Maybe people living in either place just have very different expectations.
- ProjectArcturis 1y agoThe powers that be don't care at all about thousands of insurance adjusters losing their jobs. But they care very deeply about vaporizing hundreds of billions in shareholder equity.
- binarymax 1y agoDemocrats should lean on this hard for 2026 midterm elections.
- naijaboiler 1y agomeh it doesnt matter. Biden tries "government that delivers", it didnt' work. instead his VP lost to one that promised cruelty. I used to be a what's good for type person. Now im just slowly giving up, and adopting a "eff you, I got mine" attitude.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago> Now im just slowly giving up, and adopting a "eff you, I got mine" attitude. well, that stinks. that's exactly why we have this problem to begin with.
- epistasis 1y agoThe winds may change. The media was campaigning super hard for Trump, and still refuses to cover him fairly and hold him to task for the things he does, but the results are already so awful that people see through the fawning media coverage of Trump. Don't give up hope, don't give up caring for your fellow person. A lot of fools made really bad choices, but it doesn't take many people to smarten up to drastically improve the system. You wouldn't see the Texas redistricting that's going on right now if Trump didn't know that he's completely screwed in next year's election. It's a desperate attempt to hold onto power, even if they media won't say that outright, or even dare to criticize Trump.
- RickJWagner 1y agoI’m a center/right voter. I try to read a balanced set of news sources, but to me you seem to view things from a much different perspective. I guess it depends on what you consider ‘the media’, for one.
- epistasis 1y ago
- pixelpoet 1y ago"Every country has the government it deserves." - Joseph de Maistre
- softwaredoug 1y agoFWIW this is about a pandemic era subsidy expiring. It sucks that a seemingly “temporary” subsidy was holding things together for folks > The credit was a pandemic-era relief measure that has contributed to record enrollment in the insurance sold through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
- johnwheeler 1y agoWe need to stop paying doctors millions of dollars. That’s the only way it’s going to come down. Half a million, whatever they get paid is making it so people have to do without decent insurance. That’s the biggest variable I see in the US vs other countries (not to mention bogus drug pricing, but there are controls hopefully being implemented for that.
- Ekaros 1y agoCut wages, subsidise schooling properly. Send them straight to med school. Why would a blue collar job need more education than is actually needed.
- johnnyanmac 1y agos/doctors/private equity. The CEOS who keep acquiring hospitals and running them to the ground are the real ones at fault. We can definitely pay doctors a good salary after 10+ years of post-secondary schooling. >not to mention bogus drug pricing, but there are controls hopefully being implemented for that not really much "hope" for this administration. Especially when it comes to doing things that benefit the working class.
- runako 1y agoTL;DR it's not doctor salaries. Fortunately, there has been much expert research on this, for example: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/oct/high-us-health-care-spending-where-is-it-all-going https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2... That "administrative costs" line item is closing in on $1 trillion annually, and its main purpose is to prevent people from getting healthcare.
- jonas21 1y agoThe article is surprisingly unclear about this, but the enhanced subsidies that are expiring apply to households making over 4x the Federal poverty level ($62,600 for a single person or $128,600 for a family of 4). Subsidies for those making less remain intact.
- johnnyanmac 1y agopaying $400 for health care out of pocket was already a lot. Paying 2800/month for healthcare is absurd. You may as well just foot the entire hospital bill yourself. and I thought this would be in a high CoL area. But the woman quoted lives in West Virginia. How is she paying 2-3x her rent for healthcare? For eyedrops of all things too. Honestly the story gets sadder the farther I read: >Like an asthma medication [that] can run $700 a month. There's an eye drop medication that can be $800 a month... "Luckily I can do that, but that's money I won't be able to save for investing in my 401(k) for retirement,"
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- yalogin 1y agoThey are going to kill ACA, all of it is timed to kick in after the elections next year. They cannot really kill it because its a law, so they make it unaffordable and essentially be useless and unused
- ecommerceguy 1y agoI own an Agency and write a ton of individual ACA along with Group and Medicare. Final pricing hasn't even been released yet. I'll betcha that her premium won't be anywhere near 2800, theres no information about how shes quoted what she did such as age, zip code, carrier and income. This article is rage bait. Here's a better source of information regarding how and why premiums are going up. https://acasignups.net/ https://acasignups.net/
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ncr100 1y agoI am hopeful, of course, that the lady doesn't suffer, and that you're correct about "rage bait." Thanks for sharing the linky link.
- franktankbank 1y agoTrue, its safe to say health insurance didn't get scammier.
- dilap 1y agoUS healthcare is such a pain -- very high premiums, high deductibles, tons of paperwork, no price transparency. My wife is from mexico, so while her visiting familly there I've had some opportunity to interact with and observe their system. It seems better! There are public hospitals which are open to all. The quality and wait times are reasonble, not fantastic. There is very little paperwork. (You don't have to jump through hoops like signing up for Medicaid or something.) Alongside that, you can buy private insurance and go to private hospitals, which, in my (admittedly limited) experience, are very good -- efficient and reasonably priced. I would _guess_ because of less regulation and because they have to provide value above and beyond the free healthcare that's available? In the US we seem to have created sort of the opposite incentive structure -- public healthcare is only available to a limited set of people, and everyone else is more or less forced into the private healthcare system (or "private", since it seems heavily intertwined w/ govt -- e.g., standard govt websites to pick a povider, tax penalty (tho since lifted) if you aren't signed up). Somehow there's always a mountain of paperwork and bills that dribble in over months, and you never know how much the final cost is going to be. Another seemingly-insane feature of the US system is if I pay for a service w/o insurance, I'll be billed some crazy rate. With insurance, I'll copay some reasonable-ish rate, and the insurance company will also pay some reasonable rate, often at like a 90% discount to the "quoted" rate. It feels like I'm coerced into insurance because I can't out-of-pocket pay the actual real reasonable rates. Another annoyance is it also doesn't seem possible to buy insurance that just covers accidents, which I would personally do if I could...
- lurking_swe 1y ago> In the US we seem to have created sort of the opposite incentive structure -- public healthcare is only available to a limited set of people, and everyone else is more or less forced into the private healthcare system (or "private", since it seems heavily intertwined w/ govt -- e.g., standard govt websites to pick a povider, tax penalty (tho since lifted) if you aren't signed up). There is no “we”. The rich and influential people that run the US _designed_ the system this way on purpose. To extract as much money from citizens. We didn’t reach this point by accident. Is there a presidential party or candidate that’s running on “tear the whole stupid system down and rebuild it to be simple and affordable”? Little baby steps like obama care don’t count in my opinion. No reasonable person would design a healthcare system where a hospital charges $500 for dispensing ibuprofen for example. Or a system where it’s impossible to predict how much you’ll pay as a patient. And they call it a “marketplace” lol. That’s lunacy. If you know someone running on that as their campaign, please let me know. I’d be happy to vote for them. I’ll even donate to their campaign! > Another annoyance is it also doesn't seem possible to buy insurance that just covers accidents, which I would personally do if I could... That sounds like an interesting concept. Travel insurance is sort of like that, but not the same thing obviously.
- hintymad 1y agoThere used to be a popular meme claiming that anything private tends to get cheaper over time, while anything regulated or run by the government keeps getting more expensive. But is that really true for all goods? If it is, then why do so many countries choose to adopt universal healthcare systems with tightly regulated insurance? Maybe the more relevant question is: why is healthcare so expensive in the United States? It can’t just be because the U.S. is more advanced or developed. After all, one of the hallmarks of an advanced country should be making essential services affordable, if not cheaper.
- CommenterPerson 1y agoAll the people saying "Government is inefficient". Come on, do you think the CEOs who only work for quarterly returns are going to provide great healthcare? No, they are going to use every opportunity and propaganda to keep ripping you off.
- klipklop 1y agoThere is a calculator mentioned in the article: https://www.kff.org/interactive/how-much-more-would-people-pay-in-premiums-if-the-acas-enhanced-subsidies-expired https://www.kff.org/interactive/how-much-more-would-people-p... I am trying to do the before/after for a single Adult earning $25,000 per year. It looks to be a 4% difference. I am not sure how you go from ~$500 to $2800 using this calculator. Short of starting to cover more people like children, etc.
- thunky 1y agoI put 75k income and it says: Your cost for a silver plan would increase by $1,577 per month ($18,924 per year) without enhanced subsidies That's for a 63 year old in a random zip code in WV.
- throw_away 1y agoI had no idea that ACA prices were so different based on where you lived. I couldn't understand the numbers as I put in my family's stats & saw $600-$800/mo in my current and a couple of my former locations. Then I flipped to a random zip code in WV & it was $2200.
- klipklop 1y agoAh, I didn’t specify location. I do wonder if this calculator is working properly. I have no way to confirm. Like the person below said it’s wild how much the price swings. Seems to defy logic. Then again we are talking about US healthcare….
- bentt 1y agoI have an ACA plan and am going to take a giant hit when the tax subsidies end. At the same time, I wonder if it might be not such a bad thing. Yes, I and millions will suffer higher premium costs. Yes, many people will drop insurance or take bad plans. Yes many more people will die because of this. But ultimately, prices for health care must come down. If we continue to route infinite tax dollars towards the price setters (hospitals and doctors) then why would they change? The only way they would reduce prices is if less people will pay. The only way that happens is if there is some pain, somewhere. I don’t want people to suffer, but we have been headed in the wrong direction for so long… something needs to shake things up. And ultimately, if this means some MAGA voters question their vote because they cannot get health care due to this change, then extra good. But then again, it’ll still be Obama’s fault somehow.
- franktankbank 1y agoNot to rain on your parade but all this does is continue to prop up a succubus class pretending to be middle class. Please continue to advocate for yourself. There are millions of worthless fuckers getting paid to fuck you over.
- j_timberlake 1y agoJust in time for the midterm elections? Seems like the Dems have this handed to them on a silver platter, but they're so bad at winning elections, it probably still won't matter.
- Projectiboga 1y agoSingle payer would allow all outcomes to be evaluated in total per year, so we could see better which things work and not, and what are the best return on spending. Big medicine doesn't want that, nor an FDA that has to consider budget implications of approvals. The ways single payer would help is by reducing friction in getting care, much less time with any approvals. And everyone would need less liability coverage if health costs are covered. That can lower automobile, business and other liability insurances. Everywhere else does it for less of a share of their own GDPs.