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no_such_reality
ParticipantShow us the data BG, because CalPERS calculates that cops life expectancy is longer than the general public.
Participant[quote]Individual policyholders SHOULD have the freedom of choosing between an HMO, PPO or a simple catastrophic plan. They’re paying the ENTIRE premium! It’s a free country, NSR. If some policyholders want the freedom to choose a provider in another state who belongs to their plan or join a clinical trial in another state or country and/or they are willing to pay the out-of-network difference, that’s their perogative.[/quote]
You can still buy whatever policy you want through the private markets.
If you go through the health exchange, they’re standardized.
Will the insurance industry adapt? Sure, and yes, companies will choose not to offer plans that have just a handful of clients.
[quote]I lost an immediate family member from Stage 4 melanoma. It’s a swift and sure death. I myself have had a non-malignant skin cancer removed. This is another one of those diseases that is entirely preventable by taking personal responsibility for one’s skin in the sun and paying attention to changes in one’s skin.[/quote]
Sorry to hear that. As for melanoma being preventable, not really. Unless you consider clueless behavior before age 10 and before the sun was consider really harmful reckless. There’s plenty of studies basically shown your risk factor can be porked by one sunburn.
Prevent death sure, that’s diligence, aggressive treatment. Prevent occurrence, nope.
As for a simpler just exclude pre-existing conditions, yea they could have, it’s just a variation on what’s been done. But without a bunch of new enrolls, subsidized, your premiums would be even higher.
Participant[quote=bearishgurl]
“Obamacare” is having the effect of dismantling a “system” that, IMO, wasn’t really broken.If a person is otherwise healthy now, i.e. achieved a remission from cancer, they shouldn’t be considered to have a “pre-existing” condition. For the most part, I agree that “pre-existing conditions” should not be considered in the underwriting process.
[/quote]That’s why it’s broken. They are. In fact, you are borderline un-insurable if you have had it. You could be like some previous posters here and carry high expense, high deduct, high copay and a bazillion exclusions.
But that’s really, just the lottery. Except, unlike the lottery, you’re almost guarantee winner. As a female, you have 1 in 3 chance of developing cancer, regardless of how healthy you think you’re being. As a male, it’s 1 in 2 chance.
As a couple, that’s a combined 83% chance one or the other is getting something. Once that something comes up. Don’t lose job, don’t get a gap in coverage. And even if you have your insurance, hope you can still make the new premium payments, because your premium is now base on the ‘I’m a cancer patient’.
As for losing your plan, that as Aetna’s choice. As for your costs increasing, it’s a combo of factors. The first is your age, the plan cost go vertical even before ACA, part is ACA.
America had the best system, as long as you didn’t get sick and survive. It works wonderfully as long as you get sick and die.
America also has a huge problem. You exemplify it. You want to go were-ever for what-ever treatment you think is warranted and you want someone else to pay. The insurance. That’s extremely expensive.
I understand your complaint, but I’ve known too many people that basically have lost that die roll and now can’t get insurance, or have prohibitive costly insurance. They were just like you, up until that melanoma spot showed up.
ParticipantParticipantBG, I used to work in insurance. Aetna is huge as a company, huge in the corporate insurance realm, but as an individual insurer, they’re a bit player in California.
If you’re perfectly healthy with no risk factors, you can get a competitive plan from them. But at a less than 5% market share, Aetna decided not to compete.
A bunch of other companies did decide to compete.
[quote]Believe it or not, it is NOT WORTH it for insurance companies to even collect a $1100, $1500 or $2100 a month premium on a LOT of “guaranteed-issue” new sign-ups.[/quote]
Since as a society, we’re not really willing to say let them die in the street. There’s a ton of reasons why companies will not insure people.
As for those guaranteed losers, well, some one is eating it already today before ACA. The person is you. Like it or not, your premium already is that much higher, the bills from the ER are 5-10X what they should be because only 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 people seeking treatment have the ability to pay.
Or, we can go Dickenesque, let them die in the street. Don’t show up anywhere without your med-card or med-chip and don’t lose conciousness, no proof of pay, no treatment. Hope you don’t die.
As for wanting treatment where-ever, whenever and speedily. You can always pull out cash. In fact, if more people did, I suspect you’d find medical care is actually a lot cheaper and suddenly, you really decide do you need that $3000 patented cancer screening.
At the root of the issue is insurance is about spreading risks. When the insurers, can drop your coverage, deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions, etc, there really isn’t a level playing field. Not among consumers, but between consumer and seller.
An easier fix probably would have been to simply exclude the ability to factor pre-existing conditions, limit insurance groupings to zip code or larger geographic regions, all in, all or nothing. Not even smoking, IMHO.
Why? Because once you say smoking, then frankly, you start the rectal exam of every choice you make. You want health insurance, sure, he’s your car monitor so we know if you speed or not.
Participant[quote=bearishgurl]I just noticed insurance giant United Health is also not participating in CA’s state-run healthcare exchange. That’s three giants and counting.[/quote]
The state’s four largest health insurers — Kaiser Permanente, Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California and Health Net Inc. — were all selected.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/23/business/la-fi-mo-covered-california-health-plans-20130523
Frankly, Aetna was a non-competitive bit player in the private insurance market having less than a 5% market share.
Participant[quote=SD Realtor]arrrrggggg….
Sometimes it can be so challenging reading posts.
No a little over a month ago you could not get a 3% mortgage. You could get perhaps a 3.625% rate. That same mortgage today with the same points is close to 4.5%. Rates move up instantaneously on days when the benchmark moves but take a few days to retrace when the benchmark goes the other way. Yes this does affect buyers. [/quote]
Less than two months ago, I was looking at refi-ing my jumbo. I could have had 3.625% no costs, was holding out for 3.5%, today, that same loan is 4.99%.
Rates are up about 1.25% in the last two months and just under 1% in the last month.
On a $500K loan, that’s $5000/yr from the low point on rates. The double whammy is the homes have gone up insanely fast. The triple whammy is the points are even steeper to do a buy down and I’m seeing a lot of the 0.25% pts on the base loan amount (volatility buffer by the lenders), which is a trivial, but pertinent, $1000 for people up front.
ParticipantParticipantNew IRS Chief, Inappropriate Screening Broad
Nutshell: you didn’t get the full story before…
June 24, 2013 at 9:02 AM in reply to: Another excellent Economist Mag article on the terrible state pension issues #763175ParticipantSK, the 63,000 count, is just Bay Area municipalities and counties. Alameda county is 9000+ employees, Oakland city another just short of 5000. etc.
BTW, I’m not sure how saying the he guessed wrong, when he said “I guess not” to someone else saying they’re fixed is saying they’re not fixed.
June 24, 2013 at 8:32 AM in reply to: Another excellent Economist Mag article on the terrible state pension issues #763173Participant[quote=SK in CV]
You guess wrong. The vast majority of California public employees have had their contributions increased. The 63,000 cited, who received either full or in most cases, partial payment of the employee contribution by their employers is dwarfed by the number who have had their contributions increased over the last few years. The 63,000 is less than 1/3 of the number of state employees, and around 6% of the total number of current employees covered by CalPERS. This method of funding, as bad as it is, is the small, almost tiny minority, not the norm.[/quote]SK you’re missing the point. The Prison guards had it I don’t think Brown removed it from the contract.
The point is, that this kind of slight of hand is intentionally deceptive at best, dishonest and flat corrupt at worse. They make statements like, the employee share is XX%, then in another part of the contract, the State agress to pay the employee portion.
Corrupt, IMHO. Purely intended to lie to the people about what is really being paid. That’s my main complaint with many of the positions, the pay isn’t the pay, there’s base pay and then a plethora of different certification bonuses, shift bonuses, built-in overtime because they’re working. It’s like the fire fighters running around quoting the lowest possible entry salary saying, fire fighters make $34,000, then you look at the W2 statements and find more than a 1/3rd making over $100K and the majority north of $80K.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t necessarily pay them that, I’m saying the government need to start being honest about what they are really being paid and what their future benefits are.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]
I’m pretty sure that’s the same thing I said, with only slightly different words. The only thing that makes it a petulant reaction is that that the hint wasn’t significantly different than it has been in the past.[/quote]Slightly different. Yours implies they are acting like a child getting denied something they want but won’t really affect them.
Mine implies they’re addicted and going to have real problems when the juice stops.
I think the later is true and not the former.
June 20, 2013 at 9:37 AM in reply to: Another excellent Economist Mag article on the terrible state pension issues #763071ParticipantNo, how’s it compare to Cadillac Desert, basically the building of the West through the water programs.
Incredible DVD if you can find it, originally done by PBS I think. The documentary had interviews with the then surviving key players in the Bureau, etc.
Participant[quote=SK in CV]No. This is the petulant market reacting to the Fed saying almost exactly the same thing they’ve been saying month after month for what seems like years. The free flow of candy MIGHT begin to be reduced sometime before the end of the year, if, and only if, inflation, GDP growth and unemployment hit projections. Inflation remains very low. Unemployment remains very high. GDP growth remains positive but sluggish. This is classic over-reaction to nothing changing.[/quote]
No SK, this is a junkie spasming over the hint that the juice is going to stop in the future.
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