Insurance Turning Out To Be Unaffordable
More than half of the counties in 34 states using the federal health insurance exchange lack even a bronze plan that’s affordable — by the government’s own definition — for 40-year-old couples who make just a little too much for financial assistance, a USA Today analysis shows…
More than a third don’t offer an affordable plan in the four tiers of coverage known as bronze, silver, gold or platinum for people buying individual plans who are 50 or older and ineligible for subsidies.
Those making more than 400% of the federal poverty limit — $47,780 for an individual or $61,496 for a couple — are ineligible for subsidies to buy insurance.
The USA Today analysis looked at whether premiums for the least expensive plan in any of the metal levels was more than 8% of household income. That’s similar to the affordability test used by the federal government to determine whether premiums are so expensive consumers aren’t required to buy plans under the Affordable Care Act. (USA Today)
Lie #2:
“We will cut your premiums by $2500 with the ACA.”
That’s more like Lie #295.
Can we just scrap this disaster and go back to 2008 and start again with the “health care makeover”?
This is what happens when people who don’t understand anything about health care are in charge of health care reform.
If only he had fostered bipartisanship as promised by giving on something like tort reform instead of going down this path of maximum resistance.
2014 will be an extremely interesting year for health care.
Insurance companies will be raking in the cash
Just as with Medicare, another health reform that does not necessarily improve health outcomes but bloats health care costs permanently.
Even when counties have a plan meeting affordability standards, it doesn’t exactly offer much choice. Which is counterintuitive in a competitive healthcare exchange.
More than anything, these sky-high prices simply encourage people to delay signing up for coverage until a catastrophic event befalls them.
It sounds more like the Unaffordable Care Act.
Once again, the middle class is hit hard by Obama’s policies as they take on the burden of displaced health care costs under the ACA.
Actually the situation is even worse than depicted in USA Today, for anyone who has to pay their premiums in after tax dollars. In that case the health premium is an even larger percent of their disposable income.
For what it is worth, I read several blogs that are populated by ACA supporters. Some of them claim that the individuals over 400% of poverty are not really middle class at all, but more like the top 20% of Americans. So they get no sympathy.
This is what happens when the Harvard humanities grads of POTUS, COTUS and SCOTUS, almost none of whom have had advanced studies in STEM, economics, actuarial science or even accounting, for chrissake, make and enforce laws.
As William F Buckley said, “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”