Because the point of pushing single payer isn't to get single payer, it's to win elections.

Here's how you can prove* me wrong: if you are a single payer person who was DNC Chair for life, would we get single payer in our lifetimes?

*By prove, I mean make a logical assertion that I'm wrong.

I'll even spot you a world where the DNC loves your single payer focus to the point that they keep reelecting you for life.

Mother****er the point of winning elections is to get single payer.

I honestly don't want to get into the politics of this but I figured someone here could explain this to me.

I'm considering an early retirement but am not eligible for medicare for a few years. I went online to see how much health insurance would cost me if I just purchased it myself.

Every single carrier I looked at had temporary short term plans but none had anything else. In fact they all had a disclaimer that said something like "We will no longer be offering this or that beginning 2018"

My guess is they are exiting Obamacare? Why can't (or won't) they offer anything at all?

I'm in Florida if that has something to do with it.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/heal...157688144.html

Sign up on www.healthcare.gov.

Thanks. Very helpful.

So, is it the law that they can't sell individual insurance unless it is tied to ACA? Did companies offer individual plans before ACA?

Probably a dumb question. I'm guessing rates are regulated, and in this case by ACA.

States had the option to set up exchanges, but Florida didn't. All states that didn't use Healthcare.gov. The individual plans before the ACA were usually crap that either didn't hardly cover anything, or if they did, the insurance company would not let you renew it if you used it enough.

The ACA set up minimum requirements for the individual insurance market whether sold on exchanges or not.

However the ACA also has a provision that allows insurers to continue to sell plans that don't meet the minimum requirements to people who had those plans before the ACA passed. This was because of Obama's pledge that if you have insurance you will still be able to get that same insurance...

Yes but not to people with pre-existing conditions... Mostly with $1,000,000 lifetime benefits caps. Covering whatever (read the fine print carefully). And when people tried to collect on significant claims insurance companies had recision departments that tried to dig up info that would invalidate the insurance (like if the customer lied about ever having smoked or the number of drinks they had a week, etc.).

Also profits are limited to 20% now. Any excess profits must be returned to customers. Before profits were whatever they were.

Rates are negotiated. insurance companies propose increases and the government decides if they are reasonable. And then typically allows a smaller increase (then the companies decide if they want to continue to sell on the exchanges).

Also, under the ACA, the rates insurance companies can sell to the elderly can be only 3x the rates for younger people. Previously old age would be treated like a pre-existing condition and plans might be unaffordable for most elderly people.

Thanks!

Yeah, uh, did he just prove the Democrat Plantation people correct? I did not see that coming.

Disclaimer: I don't understand this issue much at all. "Who knew it could be so complicated?" Well, me.

I went to the ACA site and was frustrated because I couldn't figure out how to just see rates without attempting to enroll. Maybe user error?

So, I went directly to one of the insurers that Chips listed. $600 a month! YIKES!

Not only that, but the uncertainty of what might happen with this in the not so distant future is disturbing.

You should at least wait to see the results of Senator Menendez' trial in NJ before deciding. If he is convicted it could be trouble for the ACA, which would put any plan you buy now in peril.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/n...rial.html?_r=0

If the ACA survives then your income is a big ingredient. If your retirement income is modest then the subsidy will help a lot. If the ACA is repealed, especially repeal with no replace, then buying as an individual at your age is not realistic. You have to work.

Here is a Kaiser map that lets you see age / income / cost / ACA / AHCA.

http://www.kff.org/interactive/tax-c...teractive-map/

btw ACA is the real name for obamacare.

You can use healthcare.gov and get far enough in the enrollment process to actually see plans, and then not enroll. That's what I did the first time, when I was also trying to actually see the costs. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, effort-wise, but there's no real reason not to do it. If you do end up enrolling you won't have to put in all the information again.

At what point in the process do they show your cost with the subsidies put in? I ask because from what I understood a lot of the people who were complaining about the cost on the exchanges weren't taking advantage of the subsidies. So is there an additional step to have to receive the subsidies?

There is an additional step, you have to put some income info down.

Just use https://www.healthsherpa.com/
if you only want to see plan prices. $600 ain't bad, probably less than what your employer was paying for you.

Yeah, that was my next question. Mf'er how can this stuff be so expensive? I've always had a full time job where I was covered. I'm pretty oblivious to all of this.

I'm pretty sure my next move is to get a part time job that offers coverage. The pay sucks but when you factor this in, it's much more palatable.

Thanks for the link.

We've offered employee insurance for almost 15 years now. It's anecdotal I know, but the lowest year to year increase we've had offered was 5%. The largest was 72%. Changing providers and increasing deductibles (and adding HSA's) have helped us stay in the game, and we have a relatively young, healthy crowd.

I see no way to avoid single-payer long term. It's a real ****-show out there.

Yeah most Americans have no idea how expensive their coverage really is. And your rate is with subsidies.

FWIW I believe Starbucks is a good PT job that offers full benefits. I used to date a girl that worked there and she said their employee plans were excellent.

Was she good with foam?

ICWUDT

Just got around to this. This is an excellent website. You can compare all plans with it, easy to use provider lookup. Very good. Thanks.

But......Holy Moly. Not only are plans over $600 month, but that is with a $7,000 deductible. This is ****ing outrageous. Seriously, how can they charge $600 a month for something I'll probably never use. I can't think of many years where I've spent more than $7,000.

Welcome to the politics of health care. The threads from when Obamacare was being written cover all the gory details and are as long as an HP game. Cliffs:

* At our age those crazy prices are below costs. The risk of huge expensive problems curves up. It's close to zero for young people and not zero for us. Young people premiums subsidize old people premiums in Obamacare which puts a limit on the ratios. In Obamacare high income also subsidizes low income. If you aren't working see what your subsidies will be. That $600 plan might be $200 or less.

* Prices also curve ever upward. This happened before Obamacare which lowered the slope a bit but they still go up. Controlling prices will take more socialism, and most American politicians are afraid of that.

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Information asymmetry is one of the roadblocks. You wish to spend $0 on healthcare. You buy it only as necessary and then you have no idea what you need so you buy what the doctor tells you to the extent that you have any choice. Your doctor doesn't have a lot of price incentives other than what gets her reimbursed.

A tremendous amount of pure waste in the system is spent arguing about who will pay the bill and how much. You consume some health care. It gets coded up and the bill is debated by the provider, the insurance company, the government, and you. There is no value in this step, just people burning money. The cure is to eliminate the debate industry and just have one payer (the government).

Monopsony and monopoly are also important words. When an area is taken over by one health care provider (think big regional hospital network) or insurance company they can use their size to set prices because nobody in the area can afford not to deal with them. The big fish eats the little fish and extracts rents from the survivors. The cure is more socialism.

The pre-Obamacare rules also made it profitable for insurance companies to offer health insurance that didn't pay when you got sick. It was irrational for insurance companies to not use those methods: rescission (cancelling because you are sick), death spirals, lifetime caps, preexisting condition denials. Insurance can only work as a healthcare payment system if its mandatory, which Obamacare tried to do.

Special shout out to drug companies for their research on making new drugs that are more expensive (on patent) without being more effective. Other countries negotiate drug prices down. The US insists on paying full retail because the drug companies have many friends in congress.

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Obamacare put a band aid on a terrible system (value / $). Republicans want to rip the band aid off which will be worse for everybody but especially for you. A fix could be as simple as putting the 50 richest countries on a list, submitting the list to random.org, and copying the first countries healthcare system whole. But in the US the industry players (healthcare providers, insurance companies, drug companies) are quite powerful and determined to block anything that reduces their slice of the pie.