2016 Health Insurance Premiums

[tjfogelberg]

Those of us in the private health insurance market in Minnesota are being socked with 40-50% increases in premiums eff 1-1-16. I may have to put the RV up on blocks and park it in the driveway. I have asked my Senator to work toward renaming the Affordable Care Act. It is an insult to have the word "AFFORDABLE" in it's title. My individual premium and deductible will now exceed $10,000 for 2016.

Todd

[chaeworld]

+1 single pay insurance

[Walaby]

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

Yup... They won't blame the politicians, they will blame "those evil insurance companies"... or "those evil doctors".... or, "those evil drug companies". It can't possibly be their favorite politicians fault.

[Big_Katuna]

We are 62 and have been self employed and paying for our health insurance since 1995.

What used to cost $350 a month is now up to about $1600 a month with $3000 each deductible and co pays and also some free annual preventative test, including dental. Pre ACA was much worse, higher deductibles, no copayment, no preventative tests.
With my wife's skin cancer treatments we pay. About $25000 per year for medical expenses and yes it sucks.

Vote for politicians that support cost controls and single payer.

People that miss their old plans did not know the shortcomings and are comparing apples to oranges. Our pre ACAplan had a $1M cap. I got seriously ill and had a $1m tab.

No cap under ACA. THEY CAN NOT DROP YOU. You have a better plan than you had.

Yes, write your congress person and fight for single payer.

[RGar974417]

In Pa,insurers have asked for increases up to 59%. That's for the individual market.Last year,I saw increases up to 104% for businesses.I am chairman of our water authority.Our premiums went up 38%. They had to go up with allowing kids on a policy until 26 and the 2.3% tax on medical devices.

[Merrykalia]

Right now, our family of 4 is paying $1,475 per month and we have a $3,500 deductible, per person, or a family out of pocket of $10,000. It's going up another $118 per month as of January 1. It's an HMO and if you are out of the area, it really sticks you.

[gcloss]

ugh wrote:

gcloss wrote:
I'm part owner of a small company. Our group rates for 2016 went up 37.3% for a high deductible plan. The monthly rate for a family is now $2341 with a $10,000 deductible and a maximum family out of pocket of $12,700 per year.

Affordable my a$$.

If you own the company and have less than 100 or 50 employees, why not just shift the employees to Healthcare.gov? You cannot compete with what is being offered on that website. I mean are you by law required to provide health insurance? if not, just tell them to go there like my old boss did.

This is the reason why I was against that rule. I truly believe that companies should not offer health insurance, and it should be left to us to sop for it like car insurance. To many companies offer one package and it's lousy. Shopping around for individual cover or at AFA website, you have ton of choices.

We have 85 employees. The law requires employers with 50 or more employees must offer healthcare insurance.

[dave54]

About the same if I switch to the new self + one instead of family plan, no major change in covered services either way.

[FunnyCamper]

3oaks wrote:
I am a "Baby Boomer" and my parents taught me to take care of myself and my own needs. Not to depend government assistance. I worked all my life for what I have now and our government is taxing people like myself more and more and causing our health insurance premiums to rise dramatically in order to subsidize others who did not. The federal government had no business bringing up such a bill and passing Obamacare. :M

There were other already existing programs to take care of the people who were truly needy through no fault of their own.

so agree!

[ugh]

gcloss wrote:
I'm part owner of a small company. Our group rates for 2016 went up 37.3% for a high deductible plan. The monthly rate for a family is now $2341 with a $10,000 deductible and a maximum family out of pocket of $12,700 per year.

Affordable my a$$.

If you own the company and have less than 100 or 50 employees, why not just shift the employees to Healthcare.gov? You cannot compete with what is being offered on that website. I mean are you by law required to provide health insurance? if not, just tell them to go there like my old boss did.

This is the reason why I was against that rule. I truly believe that companies should not offer health insurance, and it should be left to us to sop for it like car insurance. To many companies offer one package and it's lousy. Shopping around for individual cover or at AFA website, you have ton of choices.

[gcloss]

I'm part owner of a small company. Our group rates for 2016 went up 37.3% for a high deductible plan. The monthly rate for a family is now $2341 with a $10,000 deductible and a maximum family out of pocket of $12,700 per year.

Affordable my a$$.

[4x4van]

I'm still in the working world, and insuring my wife and 2 (of 3) kids (age 21 & 23). I have a very good plan, but what I pay plus what my employer pays adds up to $1880 mo. That's over $22,500 per year! It has gone up every year, a total of more than 300% since the passage of Obamacare. Is it really a surprise? Someone has to pay for all of the newly insured (read subsidized) people, right?

[3oaks]

I am a "Baby Boomer" and my parents taught me to take care of myself and my own needs. Not to depend government assistance. I worked all my life for what I have now and our government is taxing people like myself more and more and causing our health insurance premiums to rise dramatically in order to subsidize others who did not. The federal government had no business bringing up such a bill and passing Obamacare. :M

There were other already existing programs to take care of the people who were truly needy through no fault of their own.

[Ron3rd]

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

Though I was not in favor of it, Obamacare actually helped me out a few years ago when it allowed one of my college kids to stay on my health insurance, but other than that, it's done little. The only thing Obamacare did was make insurance available to more people, but did nothing to contain costs, which, as I said in my other post, is really impossible since the health care lobby runs the show, not Washington.

[Ron3rd]

tjfogelberg wrote:
Those of us in the private health insurance market in Minnesota are being socked with 40-50% increases in premiums eff 1-1-16. I may have to put the RV up on blocks and park it in the driveway. I have asked my Senator to work toward renaming the Affordable Care Act. It is an insult to have the word "AFFORDABLE" in it's title. My individual premium and deductible will now exceed $10,000 for 2016.

Todd

..and there's no stopping that freight train, the health care lobby is just too powerful. It's going to go up a minimum 15% every year and there's no stopping that. Just the way our system works.

[ugh]

cant_remember_ID wrote:

bob_nestor wrote:

cant_remember_ID wrote:
As long as the health care industry is for profit, premiums and deductibles will continue to increase while coverage decreases. Nothing to do with ACA. When a treatment for Hep C runs $84,000, there are a lot of Baby Boomers that are going to cost a lot of money. Your time may be better spent to encourage your congressman to look at single payer.

Not trying to start an argument, but after ACA was enacted there were 23 non-profit healthcare organizations created to provide health insurance under ACA. As of today, 1/3 of them have been shut down by the Government for mismanagement and only of the remaining is above water financially. That would seem to disprove the assertion that the problem of rising premiums and deductibles is all because of the profit motive.

I'm not following your logic. Just because non-profic organizations are shut down, this is proof it was caused by the ACA? Many for-profit health care organizations (hospital groups, HMOs, insurance plans) are publicly traded companies, and were long before the ACA. For the companies to remain viable to their stock owners, they have to show growing profits quarter over quarter. They pay their executives handsomely. To accomplish this, they have to increase margin by lowering what they pay vs what they take in. The care of people's health should not be an open market place. I'm a proponent for a single payer system.

That will put me out of job, but I am all for that.