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...and the website is not the worst part of the ACA ride we are now on. Part of me has been ignoring a lot of the chatter around the ACA as potential right win

...and the website is not the worst part of the ACA ride we are now on. Part of me has been ignoring a lot of the chatter around the ACA as potential right wing fabricated drama. Too much noise and bilateral bullshit being thrown about these days. That was until a few days ago, when I would learn our insurance has both more than doubled in cost and is also scheduled for cancellation. Doubled and cancelled. All as a direct result of the ACA. Brilliant! To say this was shocking is an understatement. Our annual cost will go well past $15K. There's a tragedy of unintended consequences, side effects and direct effects, being played out in the background that hasn't completely come to the surface yet. We certainly can't be the last family to get news of this kind. That means in the coming months it is likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of additional individuals and families are going to receive these dreaded letters. Apparently hundreds of thousands already have. Last week was our turn. At one point this and other issues will be difficult to ignore. And they will dwarf the IT issues. The website, as much of a disaster as it is, is likely to pale in comparison to all of the other, non IT, issues. Some of what's happening is related to the incredible disconnect between Washington and technology. All you need to do is listen to some of these folks talk about the website issue to see how little they understand. I heard one senator say something akin to "they just have to re-enter a list of five million codes". In other words, the term "code" to some of these guys means "numbers" and that someone made a data entry error in copying "codes" into the website. BSS (Balaji Srinivasan) covered some of this in his excellent Startup School talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A A talk which, he comments, has been mutated into something far different from what he said by the modern equivalent of the "broken telephone" game. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619068 I agree very much with his suggestion that an "exit" is required. Not meaning that we ought to pull-up roots and go, but rather that the tech community ought to almost ignore the dinosaurs and go ahead and evolve a society more aligned to modern realities. In his talk he gives examples of various US cities that have been "exited" to some extent through technologies developed in the free market. To some extent, it's an Innovator's Dilemma kind of a problem. http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244 http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B... The only way to make step changes is to do it well outside of the organization looking after the status quo, because that's all they know and that's all they can focus on.

hga 13y ago
"as potential right wing fabricated drama" Perhaps you might want to start looking at reputable alternative news sources that e.g. would have told you you're among the 16 million who's existing policies were outlawed by the "Affordable Care Act" ... 3 and a half years ago. To those of us who've been paying attention, this is no surprise at all ... maybe not even an unintended consequence, e.g. why aren't you part of some collective (company or whatever) getting group insurance? Yeah, that's going in the direction of "right wing" fever swamps ... but entirely consistent with a lot of undisputed things we know about Obama et. al. E.g. could you be considered a modern day kulack? As for getting out of the game? I think not. E.g. assuming you and yours are less than 50 years old, one of the things you'll be paying for in whatever policies you get (note, when someone spent some quality time with an ACA calculator he could find no scenario where being married didn't result in a higher total bill) is the expensive 50-64 set. And you're not saying you can't afford paying twice as much ... you think the Federal government will make it easy for milch cows like you to escape?
tunesmith 13y ago
This is a huge story that is really difficult to get a handle on, because the premiums changes are affecting everyone very differently, and the patterns behind them are very tough to tease out. I myself saw my premium go down by over 20%, with better benefits. I've also seen a lot of accusations of lying on either side, which isn't helpful either. Some factors to keep in mind: Health insurance plans have to be ACA-compliant. Plans that aren't have to be canceled and replaced. Just because your new plan is ACA-compliant doesn't mean it's on the exchange. Check the exchange, too, as the price differences could be extreme. Some companies (Humana in particular) have been sending out inaccurate cancellation letters, with inaccurate "new premium" amounts. They got in trouble a few weeks ago in Kentucky for implying that people had to switch to the replacement plan even before the Kentucky exchange was up. Humana also recently got in trouble in Colorado and had to send out a second letter retracting their first one. It's possible that some companies may be sending out inflated premium amounts to lower risk, while knowing they will have to send out refunds in a year. Your old plan may not have been ACA-compliant. Specifically, it may have had annual or lifetime maximums (where the insurance company says, "Sorry, we have spent enough money on you; you are on your own now.") These are now prohibited. Even though this raises premiums, this is a good thing. Some states have crappy competition - Wyoming for example. There's no one else there to encourage an expensive hospital to lower prices, which means expensive premiums. That's a failure of the free market, not a failure of the ACA. (I say that because if the solution to an ACA's woes would mean MORE ACA instead of less - say a public plan - then it doesn't really fit the narrative of the ACA causing these problems.) And most importantly, the chief goal of the ACA was not to lower your premium! It was to lower health care costs over time (not compared to now, but compared to what they would otherwise be). It was to raise society's health over time (compared to now). And it was to protect people from going bankrupt from health care costs. (This is already successful thanks to the elimination of pre-existing condition rejections, and the elimination of annual/lifetime maximums.)

hga 13y ago

"as potential right wing fabricated drama" Perhaps you might want to start looking at reputable alternative news sources that e.g. would have told you you're among the 16 million who's existing policies were outlawed by the "Affordable Care Act" ... 3 and a half years ago. To those of us who've been paying attention, this is no surprise at all ... maybe not even an unintended consequence, e.g. why aren't you part of some collective (company or whatever) getting group insurance? Yeah, that's going in the direction of "right wing" fever swamps ... but entirely consistent with a lot of undisputed things we know about Obama et. al. E.g. could you be considered a modern day kulack? As for getting out of the game? I think not. E.g. assuming you and yours are less than 50 years old, one of the things you'll be paying for in whatever policies you get (note, when someone spent some quality time with an ACA calculator he could find no scenario where being married didn't result in a higher total bill) is the expensive 50-64 set. And you're not saying you can't afford paying twice as much ... you think the Federal government will make it easy for milch cows like you to escape?

tunesmith 13y ago

This is a huge story that is really difficult to get a handle on, because the premiums changes are affecting everyone very differently, and the patterns behind them are very tough to tease out. I myself saw my premium go down by over 20%, with better benefits. I've also seen a lot of accusations of lying on either side, which isn't helpful either. Some factors to keep in mind: Health insurance plans have to be ACA-compliant. Plans that aren't have to be canceled and replaced. Just because your new plan is ACA-compliant doesn't mean it's on the exchange. Check the exchange, too, as the price differences could be extreme. Some companies (Humana in particular) have been sending out inaccurate cancellation letters, with inaccurate "new premium" amounts. They got in trouble a few weeks ago in Kentucky for implying that people had to switch to the replacement plan even before the Kentucky exchange was up. Humana also recently got in trouble in Colorado and had to send out a second letter retracting their first one. It's possible that some companies may be sending out inflated premium amounts to lower risk, while knowing they will have to send out refunds in a year. Your old plan may not have been ACA-compliant. Specifically, it may have had annual or lifetime maximums (where the insurance company says, "Sorry, we have spent enough money on you; you are on your own now.") These are now prohibited. Even though this raises premiums, this is a good thing. Some states have crappy competition - Wyoming for example. There's no one else there to encourage an expensive hospital to lower prices, which means expensive premiums. That's a failure of the free market, not a failure of the ACA. (I say that because if the solution to an ACA's woes would mean MORE ACA instead of less - say a public plan - then it doesn't really fit the narrative of the ACA causing these problems.) And most importantly, the chief goal of the ACA was not to lower your premium! It was to lower health care costs over time (not compared to now, but compared to what they would otherwise be). It was to raise society's health over time (compared to now). And it was to protect people from going bankrupt from health care costs. (This is already successful thanks to the elimination of pre-existing condition rejections, and the elimination of annual/lifetime maximums.)