2016 Health Insurance Premiums

Old-Biscuit wrote:

jrobert01 wrote:
SO TRUE

3oaks wrote:
"Thank you to all of the politicians who voted for this terrible law."

And I'll bet the vast majority of people complaining about the hefty increases in health insurance premiums will vote for those very same

politicians when they come up for re-election. :R

Everyone talks about voting them out....except for theirs cause they are one of the good ones :S

While I agree in principle that we should just vote in people who will make things better, we are almost always left with the same choice death row inmates get in Utah. They can choose either death by lethal injection or death by firing squad. I doubt those inmates are all happy simply because they get to vote and I am not very happy trying to figure out the lesser of two evils.
To add to the mix, in 2016 our BC/BS plan was "discontinued". The replacement plan they suggest is $290 a month more than the plan we had. That is a increase of over 30%. As near as I can tell reading through the mumbo jumbo, the plans are pretty much the same. The new plan has a $2000 lower deductible, but has new co-pays and has a higher out of pocket limit. For two people, late 50s, making over 4 times the poverty level (lets use $66K which is $5500 a month, actual amount is a couple of thousand less) the Silver plan monthly premium is now $1290 a month with a total out of pocket of $13,200. If you make $5500 a month gross pay, you take home less than $4,000. Health insurance premium and healthcare costs on that silver plan can take $2400 of that (60% of take home). Have to agree with many other posters, you can call that a lot of things, but "Affordable" is not one of them.
Fortunately, I can cover those added costs with a few changes to my rate page. Increase those rents by a few dollars a day. I doubt the average wage earner has the same flexibility.