My Son attempted to sign up a week prior to deadline, had many problems and on the last day was unable to complete the purchase of quoted insurance coverage. So now what? They say the deadline was extended but failed to specify for who. When I asked my son what he was going to do he said, nothing. I will pay my doctors when I need to see them. I told him he may face a penalty, he said I don't earn enough to be assessed the penalty. What a sad state of affairs, he is only 26 and owns his own business while also attending a University( in his last year). What a crock and hoax Obama Exchange policies can be. And, even if people purchase many of these policies they will find them useless due to the high deductibles, high co-payments and out of pockets and failure to cover many treatments needed. Enough is enough. They lied prior to passage and changed the playfield after passage. I wouldn't trust this Administration any further than I could throw them.
He should have started earlier. But don't worry, his penalty is going to be very small. Web sites are going to have issues, every one I ever dealt with at first had something wrong with it. Give it time. In the mean time, don't worry, be happy.
The USSC is deciding the issue of federal exchanges today and will likely decide that nobody is eligible for subsidies which will make your son's insurance costs prohibitive. He will still have to pay the tax for not having it though. This is the "fix" democrats have put into healthcare, it is unaffordable and millions who had it, won't.
"he should have started earlier? First of all one has to determine their income for the current tax period and "predict what their income will be the next year. He is a full time student with his own small business. Therefore, he must gather tax information, get it to an account and wait for his net income and tax if any due to be determined, one has until April 15th to do this, yet the exchange deadline months before. Some of us don't want make decisions that are not based on fact as we don't want problems with the IRS and unfair potential penalties. He was quoted a policy by the company and said he wanted the policy, they never responded for days. He likely won't have a net income high enough to mandate he purchase insurance. But this is no way to do business. And, why should their even be a deadline for purchasing insurance on the exchange to begin with? Many just entering into a new job must wait 2-3 months until eligible for insurance and not until eligible and offered insurance do they get all information on that insurance, such as their monthly cost, what the policy covers, what the deductible is, what the co-pay is. If they don't want the coverage they need time to secure insurance on their own, through the exchange, right? Wrong, they are forced to try to secure coverage from an insurance company licensed by their State. And, if they can't afford the premium, they will likely be forced to pay the "tax" mandated by HHS/Obamacare. What a crock. They have set it up like Medicare, with a stupid and unnecessary deadline that makes no sense at all. People turn 65 at all time during the year, must they wait to get Medicare until the arbitrary sign up period. Must those turning 27 and kicked off of their parents policies have to purchase costly individual coverage because they can't buy exchange coverage? Why? You either passed obamacare so all could purchase lower cost insurance or you didn't. I say the President and Dems passed obamacare fully knowing it would fail, would cost taxpayers, individuals and families not owing federal income tax, much more, not less. They count on it failing in an attempt to pressure Congress to pass Universal insurance coverage; a system that won't work in the U.S. where individuals pay a fortune to attend medical school, do years of residency, pay 100's of thousands of dollars to establish private practices. Reimbursements for medical, surgical and extended/nursing home care have decreased yearly, in my personal observation, since the early 90's. The system is going to fall apart if reimbursements continue to decrease while the cost of practicing medicine continues to increase. At some point providers will have to stop accepting insurance, and patients will have to start paying cash, charging or signing payment plans with providers in order to receive care. Most of us pay our Dentists cash and most dental insurance pays a set amount annually regardless of treatment given or needed. Many pay thousands of dollars for veterinary care/surgery. After over 35 years in the Medical Administration field, I would advise health care providers to refuse insurance as payment, either provide their patients with a payments plan or offer them 3rd party credit/loans. This will allow them to lower their fees, treat patients and provide the care they were trained to do; and, it will create an extremely competitive environment. I would also advise their Medical/Surgical Associations to provide all information available on a given physician and provide a forum for patients to provide comments on the care they received by licensed members. I am totally correct about this idea lower costs due to increased competition. Then I would suggest that Insurance Companies only offer Hospitalization, catastrophic and nursing home/long term care insurance. And, ideally States should bid out this coverage and offer approve a handful of Companies to provide this coverage and at maximum cost based on benefits, deductible, co-payment and annual out of pocket.
You make very good points. The act needs reasonable and objective review to make it more effective and efficient. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen in this hyper-partisan environment. I wonder which state you reside in.
Had the President and Dems in a hurry to pass any law and without even reading and understanding it; this may not have happened. I doubt most Dems even knew the control HHS would have to issue regulations without Congresses input and oversight. I doubt the dems knew the President would use his power to change effective dates of various legislation within the law for Partisan and Mid-term Election reasons, such as Small business and corporate mandate effective date and other effective dates. The President and the Democratic held Congress chose to ignore input from the Public, Voters, Medical Profession and Republicans. Had they listened, many of the problems existing in the Legislation could have been avoided. Instead of amending the Medicare Law and writing separate legislation to reform the Health Insurance laws, etc. they chose to write one "huge", unmanageable law. Instead of creating new tax legislation, they included that also. The even included changes to SSA so they could use the cost savings of these changes to offset increases in cost created by the PPACA. They included legislation changing College Loans for the same reason. Verified by CBO who pointed out they couldn't use the savings from these two programs, twice; as they were attempting to do. Regulation of Private Insurance Companies was needed for decades amongst these regulations was including them in the Sherman Act. And, transparency when quoting policy coverage to include all benefits covered, all covered providers, percent of payment, deductibles and what treatment contributes to the deductible, co-payments and maximum annual out of pocket; per individual insured covered by the policy and per family. It is still difficult to get all of this information upfront and prior to deciding to purchase a policy. The "exchange" was suppose to take care of this issue. It is better but all information is not easily attainable. The Democrats promised after the Act was passed and they "read" it, it would be tweaked. Yeah right. Doubt anyone believed that. It is the Democrats that will have nothing to do with amending or doing away with problems in the Legislation. Republicans have passed many Amendments that sat in the Senate.
Nice talking points but you missed the reality of the situation when they were creating the law. The sad truth was that several key Senators refused to go along with single payer, we had a universal contempt for liberals keeping sane Republicans from even working with the left and you had a ticking time bomb, another election. So, they drafted something, reviewed it, debated it and then passed it. No piece of legislation this far reaching is easy to do and responsible officials would have modified the things that did not work while keeping the concept intact. I do not think the ACA is perfect and I prefer a single payer or expanded Medicare for all solution but they would never have passed and you know it. So, they gambled that if they just did what Romney did, they could get a bi-partisan bill. Never underestimate the unwillingness of the GOP to work for a universal good.
So you see say that since the GOP did not want any of this bull the Dems had to create a insanely bad bill, because that is all that would pass? Your logic is comical at best. Blaming a party that wanted nothing to do will health care reform, for the passing of a unread bill that turns out to be flawed in many ways, because there was a election coming up. Talking about passing the buck.
Study: Satisfaction with ObamaCare tops traditional plans http://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...amacare-more-satisfied-than-traditional-plans People who bought coverage through ObamaCare are generally more satisfied than those with other types of insurance, according to a new national survey. ObamaCare customers rated their satisfaction over the last year as 696 out of 1,000, compared to the 679-point rating by customers with employer-based plans, according to a large survey by the consumer research firm J.D. Power. Customer satisfaction has increased sharply from ObamaCares tumultuous first year. New enrollees rated their experience at 670 a significant 55 points higher than the previous year, when ObamaCare exchanges were plagued by website failures. People were more likely to be satisfied by ObamaCare if they had already enrolled in coverage. They gave even higher marks if they had auto-enrolled in their plans this year, with a rating of 744 out of 1,000. The J.D. Power study, which surveyed more than 3,000 healthcare customers, offers the first comprehensive look at the Department of Health and Human Services's (HHS) efforts to improve the customer experience in ObamaCares second year. Under new leadership this year, HHS officials had prioritized a smoother customer experience after the department had botched the launch of the ObamaCare marketplace the year before. The good news on ObamaCare exchanges comes the same week a national poll found that the number of people who support the healthcare law is now greater than those who oppose the law. The factors considered by the survey included cost, coverage, customer service and claims processing with cost making the biggest difference in satisfaction. Cost is the most influential attribute driving satisfaction among marketplace plan members. The survey also reveals the varying opinions by customers under different types of ObamaCare marketplaces. Satisfaction was highest in the 10 states that rely on a partnership with the federal government, which includes Arkansas, Oregon and West Virginia. That rating was 716 out of 1,000. Federal marketplaces were second-most popular, rated 699, while state-based marketplaces received a 683 rating. The popularity of federal marketplaces over state marketplaces could pose difficulties for HHS with the looming Supreme Court challenge. Justices will decide in June whether federal marketplaces are legally allowed to give out healthcare subsidies a decision that could force federally facilitated marketplaces to be replaced by state-based exchanges. ACA = big success! Thank you President Obama!
I could live in any State and my first hand experience/knowledge would be the same and so would my opinion. I agree with you that neither side is willing to work to reform this Act for the better. And that is why I am for full repeal of it. It should have been legislation to reform first, the Insurance Industry and regulating their premiums for insurance. Secondly, providing for a Government program to provide insurance for the "uninsurable", those unable to obtain private coverage due to costly medical conditions. Pooling these individuals together would have provided them lower cost premiums and cost taxpayers far less than subsidizing or paying for their entire premium. And, if the Federal Government through HHS hadn't required minimal essential coverage that many individuals and families simply would never need but represented some of the most costly benefits, maternity, newborn care; costs wouldn't have risen so much.
You have to explain how pooling those who are " uninsurable" would lower their premiums. If they are uninsurable they don't have insurance premiums to lower.
First of all, since due to the Exchanges, those with pre-existing conditions/hence uninsurable, are raising the costs of premiums on the Insurance Policies offered through State and Federal Exchanges/Premiums, we must separate them out and insure them as a separate group. Makes sense. If we were however to combine/pool, all those unable to get insurance due to pre-existing conditions, putting them into one group, and offering them insurance by the Federal Government/say Medicare Part E ( for everybody else), we could determine the average cost of insurance per insured and allow private insurance companies to bid to insure them. Since there are various degrees of cost of insuring pre-existing conditions(cancer, liver disease, heart disease, costing more; while diabetes type II, former smokers, those with previous illness that no longer exist;' cost less.) And if that results in an average premium that is still too costly, the Tax Payers can offer these individuals a subsidy. It would be far less costly than what taxpayers are currently, under the PPACA paying.
Actually doesn't make a whole lot of sense and you have provided zero evidence to support your assumptions. If you look at medical care for he entire population and assume the same amount of care is going to be provided overall then the costs will be the same no matter how you divide up the cost of insurance pie. Now you can shift more cost to the sick which will reduce premiums for the healthy but overall cost will still remain the same. Or you can not insure the sick and let the hospitals and doctors pass the costs on to other people who get treatment thru their insurance or you can let the government which the people fund pay the cost. No matter how you dived it up a certain amount of care is going to cost a certain amount of money unless you either remove the insurance companies cut, reduce the doctors and hospitals pay, of figure out a better more effective way of delivering the same care at a lower price. Or you could pretend that tote reform will eliminate defensive medicine and save lots of money although the Texas experience would indicate otherwise.
Why do you assume he procrastinated? He didn't. He was quoted a price for the policy he selected and they, the insurance company never followed through.
I think I have more than explained how pooling the uninsured could lower premiums. Not all pre-existing conditions will be costly. A diabetic that is well managed costs far less than an individual needing dialysis or costly medications or treatment for aids or cancer. When you group them together, the average annual cost for each will be lowered. And with Government subsidy, even lower. So use the subsidy for this group of patients.
If private insurance companies had any interest in insuring people with preexisting conditions they would have done so prior to the ACA. The fact that they would not provide insurance at any cost to those with major preexisting conditions was perfectly rational from a cost/benefit point of view. Now if what you are proposing is that it would be mandatory for companies to provide insurance for those with preexisting conditions and then the government would subsidize the insurance then the ACA already fills that requirement.
It may fit that requirement for those with a pre-existing condition but it raises the premium cost for those without pre-existing conditions. I would rather my tax dollars were spent for the government to provide several insurance plans for the uninsurable, putting them in large pools to lower the overall premium costs and allow those without pre-existing conditions to benefit from the lower premiums that excluding insureds with pre-existing conditions will bring.
Any illness raises the cost of providing insurance.. Maybe you should start an insurance company that only insures those in perfect health. Probably would permit very low premiums. Or you could actually think about how insurance works. Here's a clue, it spreads risk. Same concept works for auto, home, and any other type of insurance. If there were never any claims all insurance could be provided at just the cost of the insurance company profits.
