lol you might want to check how that conversation ended.

That was me. And as I suspected at the time you didn't bother trying to figure out what I was actually saying. Not gonna go over it again but I never said what this quote implies I said.

Lol and who are these "experts" you're listening to?

I may have argued with grizy on here before but he clearly knows a ton about this stuff.

[

The bolded is straight up wrong, unless you buy the WH's loltastic scenario of insurance companies actually anchoring the age curve to the 1.

You said there were no subsidies by people in middle and explained why. Then I explained why your reasoning is bonkers.

Insurance companies DID anchor the curve to the top age groups to set their premiums. That's (part of) why even though proportion of "young" came lower than WH (loltastic) projections, WellPoint CEO still came out and guided earnings estimates upwards.

I understood exactly what you were saying.

I was wrong about the "more and more" though. The insurance companies pretty much just skipped that and pretty much everyone anchored the aging curve to the very oldest group and assumed pretty close to worst case scenarios about the risk pool. Some major players have effectively opted out (Aetna almost everywhere and Oxford in most markets) and have decided to wait and see.

I will be surprised if major players like Aetna and Oxford won't have competitive exchange products in most major metropolitan centers by 2018. They are a little late for 2015 and probably 2016 (contracting and product approval take time) but by 2017 they should be rolling out new (or updating existing) products to compete in the bigger markets.

The short and medium term outlook for Obamacare is very very good.

Again, didn't say this. I said it for 28 year olds. 20-25s clearly subsidize, and men subsidize women.

Which companies are you referring to, specifically?

Pricing models are not based on "anchoring" to specific ages, not sure why you think that would be the case.

Yes, you did say this. And you also very specifically said the middle age groups do not subsidize and that's just totally wrong.


Essentially all of them.

I explained why more than once already.

All else being equal, the lower you anchor your age rating curve (assuming the age curve is artificially compressed), the cheaper your policies are for the oldest age group.

That leads to more customers in the oldest age group, forcing you to in fact move the anchor.

It's not wrong, unless you want to make the argument that 62 year-olds are also subsidizing, which could be true in some scenarios. But that's not what anyone has in mind when we talk about needing young people.

Insurers aren't in the business of sharing details of their pricing models, so what makes you say this?

Your condescension is getting old.

When you keep insisting on an "anchor" age you give up the game. Actuaries just do not use that concept in pricing. We use population projections and determine what rate levels will get us to meet our target margin - based on the whole pool, not just any one age or age group.

To address one of your edits from earlier, if you don't have the lowest senior rates, you don't have the lowest rates for ANY age. Avoiding seniors means you'll avoid everyone. This is what we're stuck with since the regs standardized the age curve among all insurers (within each state).

Also, insurers actually WANT the seniors now thanks to the risk adjustment program, and temporarily the transitional reinsurance program.

And avoiding everyone is exactly what some companies have opted to do. The rest used low projections for young(er) populations to effectively push push the "anchor" or the "1" in the mandated 3:1 age rating curve toward the oldest group.

I know "anchors" are not a concept used by stat people (usually). I only used it because you brought up the age rating methodology and I wanted to explain why what you posted didn't support your assertion.

NERDS

Back on topic, another hilarious reminder of just how wrong the talking points were on Obamacare:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...yintelligencer

Unmentioned but worth noting is the assertion by Ted Cruz and others that Obamacare is some sort of job killing regulation weighing down the economy, but lol that's also not true either.

In the U.S. 'neighbour ' is spelled neighbor. Agree plenty of incompetence everywhere. The difference is Obamacare takes over the entire U.S. healthcare system. The communities would only serve the uninsured(about 15%). Communities would have a lower bar. They would provide some care to the uninsured so the uninsured would not need to go to the ER for every problem.

That's not how it's done. 60 Minutes had a report on rural care. They use a nurse practitioner. She drives a large trailer within her territory. She can text and email a doctor if necessary.

Interesting article in VOX indicating Obamacare may have already saved 15,000 lives because of the Hospital Readmission penalties.

Readmission rates (for Medicare patients) have fallen 1.5% (from 19% to 17.5%) in the two years (2012-2013) since the penalties went into effect. Re-hospitalization rates had held steady from 2007-2011.

Huge drop in hospital-acquired conditions as well from 2010 to 2013.

Also hospitals have been fined $227 million as a result of readmissions.

That's not how it's done in one specific example.

I find it strange that after a few hundred pages of posts you still don't know what Obamacare actually does.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/us...d-up.html?_r=0

Sigh.... that website rollout was sooooo frustrating.

Oh yeah I'm sure you hated it every minute. You were soooo rooting for it to be a success.

Yeah I did. It made patient ed that I actually do extremely difficult for a few months. But hey, start off with I'm an evil person and you can always be the good guy suzzer, even if you're wrong.

LOL ikes relieving the glory days

A healthy uninsured male 18-34 sees a doctor about once every 3 years. Under Obamacare he pays about $3,000 a year for a silver plan. That's about $9,000 per doctor's visit. You may think that's a good value. I don't.

An 18-34 year old in a serious car accident pays 30000 for their care. I call it good value.

Random nonsense is fun!

Oh cool, now Ike knows more about health insurance underwriting than health insurance underwriters. Seems about right.

Maybe the reason he sees a doctor only once in 3 years is because he is uninsured.

And maybe when he gets insurance he will see the doctor more.

But in any case insurance isn't about how much you spend per visit when you are well. It is about getting taken care of regardless of the expense when you are sick.

So, is this post you being dumb/mocking the right?

That's what auto insurance covers. You need health insurance for skiing accidents.