How Would Health Care Reform Affect You?
Consumers Union has put together a breakdown of the health care bills in Congress to let you see how they would affect you, based on your age and what kind of insurance you currently have (if any). It's an interesting tool to see what the various proposed changes are.
For instance, because I have health insurance through my employer (thanks, Consumers Union!):
Most likely, your coverage will remain very much the same. But if you don't like the coverage you have now, you'll have some new insurance choices.
Consumers Union created some fictional families to help you understand how the reform proposals affect different types of families:
- Perhaps (like a lot of people), you have good coverage through your job.
- Perhaps you have coverage through your job, but it is not so good. Rising costs may have forced your employer to cut back on the generosity of the benefits.
- Or perhaps you have pretty good coverage now but you are not sure how long it will last. Many small employers struggle with whether or not they will be able to afford coverage at all in the future.
- Some workers would like to "strike out on their own" and start their own business if only they could be sure that they will be able to continue good health coverage for their families.
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Comments:
The important question is... How can i get on one of these death panels I've heard so much about? I aim to avenge my grandfather's death through bureaucracy... I'm looking at you Old Man Fitzpatrick, may you suffer with that gout until your final days!!
$3200 annual premium? Screw you, imaginary Randy; we pay $8,000 in annual premiums! And then $3,000 out of pocket before benefits kick in! And that's the cheaper, high-deductible plan!
The coverage kicks ass but oh my GOD do we pay an arm and a leg for it.
If accurate, this sounds reasonable to me. I am in the first catagorey of people who have good medical coverage through my employer, so nothing else even affects me.
@Notsewfast: Although, a glut of old people deaths would put too many houses on the market, increasing inventory and dropping prices. Not smart in the middle of an inventory crisis. :)
@Underpants Gnome:
Do you realize the irony in the fact that your outrageous exaggeration mimics the exaggerations you are referencing?
"Death Panels" is an exaggeration. But unless every procedure for every person is going to be paid for, somebody in the government is going to have to decide what treatments will be approved and what won't be.
Interesting, but doesn't include some potential downsides, such as:
1. tax increase to fund expansion of coverage
2. employers limiting raises if mandates increase the cost of health care plans
3. loss of access to high-deductible plans (if that's what you want/right for you)
Overall, probably worth looking at this analysis in context - it's from a group that advocates health care reform, so it's likely to have some biases, although they don't seem to be egregious.
These breakdowns don't include the tax hikes needed to pay for it all.
BTW, if you want to see a detailed critical analysis, try this which includes things like:
Sec. 1501 (beginning), Pg. 659-670 - Doctors in Residency - government will tell you where your residency will be, thus where you'll live.
I just figured out my health coverage costs $9264/year (Me + husband) and I pay in $1848 of that. I know I'm one of the lucky ones, but I'm curious as to how this bill will help me. Am I now going to be taxed on the $1848/year I pay to medical? I pay dental separately. That's one of my major concerns.
@Murph1908: "...somebody in the government is going to have to decide what treatments will be approved and what won't be."
You mean sort of like how the system is now where somebody who works for an insurance agency decides what treatments will be approved and what won't be?
Forgive my ignorance (work's been crazy for the last few months) but are the public option and compulsory registration off the table now?
A lot of people have "good coverage" through their job? Sorry I think that's a highly debatable point. My last job had what I would classify as "decent" coverage but I still ended up paying a fair bit for various things.
I know a lot of people working decent jobs and very few have what I would classify as "good coverage"
Define "good coverage". Denying coverage isn't coverage at all. It's just money wasted on bad insurance. Will reform put an end to denying coverage?
Love the fact that the IRS will be the data repository for any of the bills pending.
We know how often that records get messed up. Imagine the health insurance company makes an error on the SSN. IRS sends you a letter "Our records indicate that you said you had 12 months of insurance coverage on your 1040, while the named insurance company did not report you. Please provide your last five years of tax returns for a mandatory audit due to potential fraud, along with a check for $3800 plus interest and penalties for failure to remit the excise tax by April 15 within 30 days of the date of this letter. Additionally, please provide documentation for all sales made through eBay as Paypal provided us with a 1099-eBay which shows that you did not report your PayPal income on your 1040."
If the insurance companies can't even get COBRA right, how do we expect them to get IRS reporting correctly.
And the Paypal thing is already law.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!):
At my current job, (employer provided insurance), you'd pay about $600 a month for a family of 3, and then you have a $2,000 per year deductable...so if you actually use the insurance, it is going to cost you around 10k a year for insurance (not including any copayments, etc). And in my area, if you make 30k a year, you have a good job.
@chiieddy: All part of my master plan... I will buy all of the (former) old people's homes, pull the plastic off of the furniture, get rid of all the cats and sell for a huge profit once the market turns around.
It can't fail!
@squinko: Yes, and it's wrong in both cases and clearly something whose opportunity to fix was missed.
@thrillwill: The President said, in his speech to the joint house and senate, that while he thinks the public option is the best way to go, it's more important to do something and not go with the status quo. This effectively said he'd sign a bill without it and took it off the table.
@RevRagnarok: (Oh yeah, before the personal attacks begin, I didn't write it. Personally, I think health care should remain private but be a taxable benefit, because beyond this discussion I believe in a flat tax rate of all income of any form with no deductions/loopholes.)
@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: the conservatives would caution you that if employers lose their tax deduction, they may stop offering your old coverage. nobody can predict what will happen in the future, but what bothers me about this bill in general is it seems they're trying to rush a plan out before fully exploring all of the options. a subject this important should be debated extensively, with plenty of research, before we pull the trigger. but many lawmakers have not even read the whole bill, much less debated or thought about it
do it the deutsch way!!
@RevRagnarok: Ah, yes, the site with the URL that ends in "obamacare-is-about-controlling-every-aspect-of-your-life". Trustworthy.
@SpruceStreetPhil: @chiieddy: I think under the Baucus bill your plan won't be considered a "Cadillac" plan and thereby taxable. However, does your husband have a job? If so, your husband's employer may have to pay a penalty for not insuring him....Baucus' bill would MANDATE coverage of large employers. Unless you have a public plan (Tricare, Medicare, SCHIP, Medicaid), you will have no choice.
@NeverLetMeDown: The USA already has much higher health care costs than countries like Sweden with a (mostly) government system. The cost of paying for the health care for uninsured people is also partly built in to the existing costs. The tax increase that would happen would be met by a corresponding decrease in costs. And if done right, the cost decrease would exceed the tax increase. Republicans are basically just opposed to the government having a hand in it ... they don't care about whether it increases or decreases costs.
@squinko: No, right now it's like "Your 94 year old grandmother has cancer.... for the 5th time, but she has insurance. So the hospital will do everything they can to get another year on gram's life... even if it costs a million dollars... because that doesn't matter, those costs will just be passed onto the average insurance buyer". On the gov't medical plan, someone will decide exactly how much that extra year on gram's life is worth... Yeah, it's harsh, but this is just how it'll go. A human life does have a financial value.
@squinko: Yep. Except it will a government bureaucrat with full legal immunity and not a person or corporation that can be sued for their actions.
The only way i see is that im going to be forced to pay for people, like single illegal mexican women with "anchor" babies, out of my pocket. List it with the MANY other welfare programs stupid low-life wanna-be "gangbangers" are leeching off the system, useless "eaters".
@Saboth: We get a memo from the employer every year, so I happen to know the employer's share is around $20,000. So that's $28,000 in premiums and $3,000 out of pocket before the 80% copay kicks in (and then I ceiling out at some point and get 100% coverage, but I don't remember what that point is.)
So $31,000 a year before the insurance company covers a damn thing. My entire pregnancy, birth, post-natal care, and pediatric coverage so far (to 4 months) hasn't gotten up to $31,000.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Seriously... that's what I was thinking! I pay 1700 a year... for myself (young and healthy too)...
I, sadly, am not represented by any of the scenarios above, as I am an hourly contractor and therefore get no benefits whatsoever, other than cash (And that's minimal as well).
Was looking forward to public option. Oh well :(
~I
@craptastico: The math does not work.
Oh never mind the money. I mean the doctors and nurses:
[www.nytimes.com]
[www.slate.com]
[www.reuters.com]
So where are we getting all the staff to take on the 30-50 million newly insured?
Sure, some will no longer use the ER, but then they will be eligible for normal treatment and that will increase demand.
@RevRagnarok: I'm all for opposing views, but when you quote something like that, it doesn't support your side at all. All of those "quotes" on that webpages are not actually quotes from the bill itself. They're opinionated and taken out of context.
@Applekid:
So we just decide that everyone gets every service every time? How about a drug that costs $1 billion per dose and will extend life by 30 seconds. Do we give that to everyone?
@Snowblind: Yeah because, as everyone knows, despite insurance companies' oodles of lawyers, they're held fully accountable by the mighty weight of our justice system, which in no way favors the party with the most money.
Come on.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!):
Wow, that is steep. I pay $125/month for me, 100% payment in network, for out of network $600 deductible and 80% payment thereafter.
I'm sorry, but anything labeled "Obamacare is about controlling every aspect of your life" as the title isn't credible in the least.
@NeverLetMeDown: I would hope such a drug wouldn't get marked as "safe and effective" because it's clearly not effective. And obviously something that doesn't save a life shouldn't be granted for free. Nobody should have to die of a curable disease because they had the audacity to get sick.
@Snowblind: Exactly! Just like all those lawsuits have caused the insurance companies to totally change their ways and not screw anyone in the pursuit of a healthy profit!
Oh wait...
@Jfielder23: You do realize that currently, someone does decide how much that one year of life is worth, and that person works for the insurance company do you?
@NeverLetMeDown: As far as #2, employers have already been largely limiting raises as the cost of health care has skyrocketed over the past few years and corporate productivity has increased, but pay has been relatively flat.
For me, at the end of the day the key thing is competition, and there's a few problems with the health care market that keep it from being truly competitive, which would naturally keep prices down. I think a public option would likely lead to a tax increase at the end of the day, but the benefits would outweigh the costs. I'd actually generally prefer that government ration care rather than corporations, because their motivations are different - I'd take government inefficiency over a corporate desire to make profit most days.
Get ready for a huge tax increase! Why? Because this so called health care bill is an enormous tax increase in disguise. How? The government knows it can't tax us directly more than they are, therefore, they are getting the insurance companies to collect the taxes for them. We will be coerced to pay for expensive and ineffective health care, the government will charge the insurance carriers a hefty regulatory fee (read tax)… ta da! Sure Obama can blast the insurance companies all he wants and they won't make a sound because the carriers will still make out by getting more coerced customers and they get a nice chunk of the money. When the private health companies can't/won't deliver the health care we demand, the government will say, "see? Private health care isn't working." Then it will be plan B, which will be for the government to further take over and regulate. Boy are we going to pay! This deal is similar to the 401K deal where the government forces employers to pump serious cash into the pockets of financial firms, the difference is the new cash is going to insurance carriers. Nice! If you're a big insurer.
1) Baucus' bill discusses the tax increases, like taxing Cadillac Plans, and the excise tax (Sorry Mr. President, it is a TAX) on those who fail to get insurance. (more later)
2) Yep.
3) Yep Yep Yep.
The tax for families won't exceed $1800 a year for failure to obtain insurance, but then, who will pay for health coverage when they use it and can't afford it? Oh, that's right, the other insurance plans will pay for it, and that's how we're supposed to make Health Care affordable, by insuring everybody so we don't have to pay more for services to cover losses to uncollectible debts...
The thing that irritates me the most is that these bills don't address keeping things affordable except for:
- digitizing records (okay, that saves what, 1%? 5%?, and that would only be a one time savings, right?)
- cutting Medicare waste (okay, why aren't we doing this right now? And they've already cut back on reimbursements to doctors, and the doctors are beginning to revolt. A dirty little secret is that private insurance has not only been paying for uncollectible debts but also Medicare overruns....)
- removing the $1k per person premium to cover the uncollectible debts incurred by the uninsured. (This would be a one time savings only)
The real reason that so many people don't want a public option is this: in order to reach the goals you want, you either have to ration care - voluntarily or involuntarily, or restrict access to care. Doesn't Canada basically use an HMO type system, where primary care doctors are paid a flat amount per year, but in return they only have to work a set number of hours a year? I've read stories about doctors not being available for appointments late in the year because they're taking a three month vacation since they won't get paid for any other work that they do...
And we also know the story of Natasha Richardson, who wasn't flown to the closest hospital with the equipment needed to scan her head properly.... I think that we are at a crossroads where it will be either all private or all public, and with the all public, the only way I can see the system to survive is to ration access to equipment, which means closing trauma centers in the small cities (those cases can go to the big cities!), and of course, months to wait for appointments....for one year my children were on SCHIP because my employer at the time didn't contribute one penny to family coverage, and it was very expensive to go from employee+spouse to family coverage, and due to liberal income limits I qualified.
When my son needed care I had to wait 6 weeks to see a doctor - there was only 5 doctors in my county accepting the plan, and 4 weren't accepting new patients. To top it off, even though I was on the SCHIP plan, my kids were uninsured for three months due to the government's snafu, and what was my recourse?
Write a letter to the state board. That's it. No lawsuit, nothing. I don't expect anything better to come from a public option plan.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Holy Crap, your employer needs to get a better plan. My family coverage is $1028 employeer/$51 me and that's 100% coverage on everything except a small prescription drug copay.
[ [www.hrs.iastate.edu] ]
You forgot the part where the death panels are going to force you to have an abortion and swear loyalty to socialism.