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Obamacare: Is a $2,000 deductible 'affordable?'

Because companies will drop private insurance and workers will be forced into Obama care.
I wasn't aware that "company provided insurance" was generally equated with "Cadillac" plans, nor was I aware that those that might offer such an extravagant insurance plan would be the ones most likely to stop providing those plans. You are arguing that Obamacare is bad because Goldman Sachs is going to drop insurance coverage for their top contract employees.

This is a fantasy.
 
This is what the self employed do today. My storyboard artist friend found that after all of the digging, the highest deductable plan made the best economic sense since it covered the catastrophic things he couldn't pay for while requiring him to pay the least on premiums and office visits.

My wife's employer, whom the insurance is through, offers a plan comparison that allows you to enter hypothetical situations or needs( office visits, preventative care, hospital stays, cancer treatments, etc ), and no matter how we sliced it, the high deductible plan equated to the cheapest.

Yes, the highest deductible plans seem cheaper when you only account for what you want to account for. Did you account for scenarios where you get a long term illness that require constant tests, appointments, treatments and medicines. My mother in law has Lupus and two or three other auto immune diseases. She has to go in for IV fluids and medicines every month, she's on constant medicine, has to see multiple specialists every month or two. With everything the way it is she pays her deductible off every year within the first month or two. If she had a high deductible plan, say 10000, she'd have to pay that 10000 every single year, on top of premiums. That could easily get to be overly burdensome on people. So you can't honestly say that "no matter how we sliced it" that the high deductible plan came out the cheapest. It's only the way you sliced it.
 
He said *will* be forced out, which I would think would be ~2017-8 when the excise tax kicks in. Or if employers determine that offering those plans isn't cost effective(i.e. pay the penalty)
Those that are currently buying "Cadillac" plans don't seem to be concerned about ins. costs....so how much of an impact will a marginal increase mean to them? Very little I suspect.
 
I have looked into what Washington state is offering since I am retiring there and the choices are very limited. Having said that I am going to make out like a bandit on this new insurance. My semi retirement income is very low so my annual insurance cost that I had 12 k budgeted for will drop to around $2,400.00. Great for me but young people in their earning years will pay more for their insurance to pay for mine.
So you ARE going to go with a minimal level of insurance, an Obamacare plan, basically a high deduc/catastrophic plan?
 
I like my 3k/year deductable + HSA plan. my Premium is about 110 a month for family coverage. I also get quarterly rebates of 150/person

How much of that premium is your employer paying? 'Cause that's not all it costs.
 
The point is obamacare will force people off plans they had and liked, the so called Cadillac plans.

not THE point, one small point and not what you asked... insurance isn't 'worthless'. Now just who is on the 'Cadillac' plan anyway? I first heard that term used by the Right Wing Wonks to bash UNION workers who's contract healthcare was sooooo detrimental to competitiveness.

You now defending UNION Cadillac Healthcare plans, just to bash ACA? :confused:
 
not THE point, one small point and not what you asked... insurance isn't 'worthless'. Now just who is on the 'Cadillac' plan anyway? I first heard that term used by the Right Wing Wonks to bash UNION workers who's contract healthcare was sooooo detrimental to competitiveness.

You now defending UNION Cadillac Healthcare plans, just to bash ACA? :confused:

The unions are an easy target. Tens of millions of people have so-called Cadillac Plans. They no doubt will change, as the Administration wants them to. Until we start passing along costs to the consumer, healthcare costs will not be effected. The $500 deductible plans will go the way of the dinosaur, which is part of the reason our healthcare costs have skyrocketed.
 
ALL insurance from auto to health is 'worthless' until a major accident or major illness/injury. Then it can be priceless.

Agreed.

Do you know what that policy would cost today?? (This "average" means absolutely nothing. Healthcare insurance premiums are based on age.) Before signing up for Illinois' subsidized ICHIP program, I paid $850 a month for a $5,200 deductible policy. The rate you've listed here looks cheap. (Illinois' subsidized ICHIP program premium is $670 a month for the same deductible.)

Combine what I consider to be reasonable rates with the fact that people who've heretofore been unable tobuy health insurance because of pre-existing conditions, and I don't think these rates are bad at all.

Without a comparison to "before," your "after" is meaningless.

Agreed. The plan did not look that outrageous to me. The copays were a bit above average in my experience for that price range.

For those who thought Obamacare was going to be attractively affordable, that is not going to happen.
 
Yes, the highest deductible plans seem cheaper when you only account for what you want to account for. Did you account for scenarios where you get a long term illness that require constant tests, appointments, treatments and medicines. My mother in law has Lupus and two or three other auto immune diseases. She has to go in for IV fluids and medicines every month, she's on constant medicine, has to see multiple specialists every month or two. With everything the way it is she pays her deductible off every year within the first month or two. If she had a high deductible plan, say 10000, she'd have to pay that 10000 every single year, on top of premiums. That could easily get to be overly burdensome on people. So you can't honestly say that "no matter how we sliced it" that the high deductible plan came out the cheapest. It's only the way you sliced it.

I ran the computation they offered in numerous ways. Even under high usage, my expenses for the year capped out well below what it would have been signing up for the "normal" plan they offered.
 
I suspect its below 50%, as it is at most employers.

You suspect wrong. Part of the problem is that people have no clue what their employers are paying toward their premium. Try to buy it in the private market and get back to us. ;)
 
You suspect wrong. Part of the problem is that people have no clue what their employers are paying toward their premium. Try to buy it in the private market and get back to us. ;)

In order to be eligible for my wife's plan, I have to show what my employer pays vs employee pays for insurance, and its less than 50%. My employer has 175,000 employees.
 
You are limited to a couple of plans your state offers with Obama care.

This isn't true. The state doesn't even offer a plan! Boy you really bought all the right-wing fearmongering didn't you.
 
It's insurance. You can't just look at a single year and say "see you're over paying!" Because then you overlook that one year where you needed emergency surgery with a short stay in the ICU, where you shelled out a few thousand but didn't have to pay the other hundred thousand dollars of your bill. Do you really not understand that or are you being intentionally thick headed?

You can't be denied for a pre-existing condition, so why on earth would you pay for insurance when it's cheaper to pay the penalty?
 
You suspect wrong. Part of the problem is that people have no clue what their employers are paying toward their premium. Try to buy it in the private market and get back to us. ;)

My wife and I are self employed. We have a high deductible with RIDERS to cover accident, cancer and major illness. It runs us $407.00 a month.

We had a for crap plan with no riders that cost us 550 a month. Gotta shop around.
 
I think you're missing the entire concept of health insurance.


No, I'm not. Democrats forgot the purpose of health insurance when they designed a system that is more expensive to participate in than it is to not participate. The penalties for not participating in the exchanges is less than the premiums+copay. If someone get's catastrophically ill and was not on insurance when they got sick then they can simply apply for insurance at the exchange and they have to be accepted.

So why participate?
 
Health insurance used to be a simple fee for a simple service. Insurance was only for catastrophic care. There are two reasons things became so insanely expensive, both of them brought to us by Democrats:

1) Every time anyone tries to do anything about frivolous lawsuits, Democrats rush in to stop them, and vote them down along party lines, because trial lawyers are the left's 2nd biggest campaign contributors (and nothing else matters but Democrat power).

2) In their standard obsession with forcing equal results at everyone else's expense, Democrats passed law, after law, after law, forcibly expanding what insurance companies had to cover and how they had to cover it.

Even then, there was no actual health care crisis for Obama to rush in and destroy the economy (and what was left of the Constitution) over.
 
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not THE point, one small point and not what you asked... insurance isn't 'worthless'. Now just who is on the 'Cadillac' plan anyway? I first heard that term used by the Right Wing Wonks to bash UNION workers who's contract healthcare was sooooo detrimental to competitiveness.

You now defending UNION Cadillac Healthcare plans, just to bash ACA? :confused:

Interesting, I thought it was Obama care supporters bashing Caddy plans saying it drove up health care cost for everyone else. The point is obamacare has no Caddy plan that some people want or even need.
 
For me that works. My wife and I are in good health, take no meds and only go to the doc once a year for a physical.
OK....so then your worrying about Cadillac plans has nothing to do with your own personal interests, it was just a rhetorical device.
 
Interesting, I thought it was Obama care supporters bashing Caddy plans saying it drove up health care cost for everyone else. The point is obamacare has no Caddy plan that some people want or even need.
If a "cadi plan" is one with low/no deductible....well, the platinum plans get pretty close.
 
ALL insurance from auto to health is 'worthless' until a major accident or major illness/injury. Then it can be priceless.

So why aren't we just being forced to buy catastrophic care coverage?
 
OK....so then your worrying about Cadillac plans has nothing to do with your own personal interests, it was just a rhetorical device.

The world does not revolve around me, I consider how Obama care will effect other people and the country in general. As I said I am going to make out like a bandit.
 
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