OT: Does anyone know when they announce health premiums for next year?

In the U.S., will there be cost increases for the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare)? Hopefully little or no increase for next year. I was wondering that if there is an announcement before November of major increases in health premiums then it might affect how people vote in the presidential election.

I think every state has different dates but the prices need to be approved by each state's insurance board/department.

I live in NY but I do not have an ACA policy, they sent out notices in June that my insurance carrier was asking for an increase in Premiums this year. After we receive notices then we can comment on the policy increase to the NYS Department of Insurance. This year NYS approved an increase in my premium but only for 1/2 of what the Insurance Carrier asked for.

Lol @ Skeeter's Bait Shop.

The logistics alone of setting up selling healthcare across state lines would be a nightmare.

open enrollment for 2017 starts Nov 1st and ends Jan 31st. If you sign up between Nov-Dec, your coverage starts Jan 1st. If you sign up in Jan, your coverage starts February 1st.

At least we can't be denied because of our health issues. Before ACA, you could be denied coverage or be charged bigger premiums than a marketplace plan would charge.

I hear that it will be going up and I am not happy. I pay $1100/month for family and a lot of my drugs went up in tiers (so when I paid $15 for 3 months, I now pay $250) and some were dropped all together. There has to be better than this. Sad, lame, disappointing.

Respectfully, I disagree. Though correct me if I'm wrong, I saw something similar to what I would advocate above...

Universal healthcare means we lose freedom of choice. It means we will all be taxed even more than we are now to pay for each others healthcare. Which means we are going to start working more and longer hours to make up for the extra taxes we'd have to pay. To me, my views stem from freedom and joy for all people. Freedom to choose our purchases and what kind of healthcare or insurance we want for ourselves. When other people choose life choices for you, you feel controlled and freedom is lost to someone else.

Why do we just HAVE to make others pay for us? Nothing should be universal. Just because something is guaranteed free, doesn't make it good. I'm worried about the quality when this happens. I dream of the day that health insurance is banned and healthcare is back on the private market where Doctors offices will start competing with their pricing and healthcare would naturally become affordable to the middle-class citizen.

Health insurance literally pays for doctors to stay in business, so because they can rely on that , they can adjust their prices to whatever astronomical number they would like, and not have to compete with one-one another. Which equals stress on the patient/consumer.

A socialist society preaches survival, and boasts safety of survival. But in America, we're risk takers, builders and opportunists. I'm not out for this whole, "depend on the government to make me happy, take more of my hard earned money each year and call it taxes, but then distribute it around and keep a piece for themselves. I believe in charity, but when you force people to comply with a one size fits all business model, it shouldn't be a shocker to understand that we will not all come to agree. =/

I'm sorry, looking over the Bill of Rights, I must have missed that one-liner.

Healthcare is a choice. It's always been in this country until now. Tell me, why I should pay for your healthcare? We don't live the same lives, we don't see the same doctors or have the same health issues. And, we're not a socialist society. I can make my own choices and if we trust ourselves to choose wisely, perhaps others can too. For those that need healthcare, there's Medicaid, which I'm thankful to be on for this year after losing my job briefly.

To the masses of people that buy into trusting the government to fix all of their problems, apparently, common knowledge is gone as well.

Yeah Stereo! And what's with the Armed Forces defending the poor without them paying up? And why do Police and Emergency services turn up to poor people's houses, what kind of rort is that! And don't get me started on all the infrastructure us rich people bought for those people.
Of course, only those who can afford education should go to schools, and why on earth are the lower classes allowed to drive on our roads!
Quite frankly I look forward to putting up a big fence, and checking credit card details before allowing entry.
Lets take a stand against those free-loaders moving in on us folk who fell into a pot of money at birth, or got lucky and landed high paying jobs. The Government has to stop supporting this outrage.

There's certainly a strong "personal responsibility" and "self reliance", strain within the us. It coalesce in points like described. They're opinions like anything else and anyone is okay to have them.

There's certain things that are in the public's best interest that in my opinion should be socialized, education, healthcare, food safety, transport/infrastructure and other such things. I think its important that those I interact with and rely on in society have a basic education, are healthy regardless of the social class they were born into. I know our libertarian friends would disagree and want government to do none of those things at all. Without it only those born in privilege would have those things and nobody else would. Upward mobility in the us is almost a myth at this point, most of the world over has better upward mobility chances due to such socialism (start everyone on more equal footing and give them all more equal opportunities to succeed and they will).

iPoop said...
There's certainly a strong "personal responsibility" and "self reliance", strain within the us. It coalesce in points like described. They're opinions like anything else and anyone is okay to have them.

There's certain things that are in the public's best interest that in my opinion should be socialized, education, healthcare, food safety, transport/infrastructure and other such things. I think its important that those I interact with and rely on in society have a basic education, are healthy regardless of the social class they were born into. I know our libertarian friends would disagree and want government to do none of those things at all. Without it only those born in privilege would have those things and nobody else would. Upward mobility in the us is almost a myth at this point, most of the world over has better upward mobility chances due to such socialism (start everyone on more equal footing and give them all more equal opportunities to succeed and they will).

We have a very specific role for government in this country and it's not to do everything for, and guarantee everything, and give everyone's right to everything in this country. We talk about making something free, but I'm concerned about quality, you can talk about free education and healthcare, but that doesn't make it good. What makes it good is competition, injecting that competition within all communities and allowing them to compete with each another to create a product, and weed out the bad products.

And, I don't have money. I'm over $140,000K in debt from school loans and I'm working unpaid internships and small gigs in the entertainment biz. But, I still don't believe I'm entitled to anyone else's hard earned money or have any desire to spread wealth around and I'm certainly not given anything from my parents who were less than money-makers themselves. Take a look at Venezuela, they are in terrible shape as a socialist country. It becomes a top-down environment where people literally count on the government to choose, provide, give and tell them what to do, with what little amount they have. No thank you for me. I'm so disappointed in of some of my colleagues who yearn for this type of lifestyle. I want to do more than just survive, I want to thrive.

We already guarantee free public education, though we keep insisting on pursuing advanced degrees that don't amount to a decent paycheck. How about we work on the public education system we have in place so that we can get back to a prosperous period where instead of a millennial having to pursue 6+ years in college/post-grad to gain an entry level role in their field, we say, the 2 year associate or technical degree my father pursued to earn a decent paycheck, should be enough. When we say, Jan is poor, she's unhappy and has very little, so we're going to take from John to give to Jan. That didn't do anything, now John is unhappy.

I certainly don't have real solutions to our problems because I'm not a politician, but I'm sure I can rise up and take care of myself and trust myself to handle and choose what I personally need, and not for anyone else. I can only hope that people see the advantage of having this freedom and the joy it brings, because we are in such a mess right now.

Post Edited (stereofidelic89) : 9/28/2016 6:21:55 PM (GMT-6)

I understand your basic philosophy and I agree that nobody is happy giving up say 20 cents of every dollar as a tax just to give to another (we're rather keep it all for ourselves). Words like socialism are still wielded around broadly at anything with a Joseph McCarthy like sword. It's easy to use terms like givers and takers, and call others less deserving than us and therefore resent them for it. However, I believe that if we set others up with more opportunity to be successful then they are themselves better able to be a benefit rather than a burden to our society and that's a big reason to help others in that way. Should they not be given opportunities then they are much more likely to be a burden in emergency rooms and prisons which is much more expensive than giving them a fair chance for preventative care, education, and so forth from the getgo. And maybe that tax you're paying is just a repayment for your own public education and other benefits that you got growing up. As everyone gets help, benefits, and subsidies either directly or indirectly to have the success they enjoy, none of us are entirely self-reliant ourselves, so I am not sure why we expect others to be. I'm just a crazy liberal, I don't expect everyone to agree with me. And I can see that your view is on the polar-opposite of the spectrum from mine, so I hardly expect agreement.

This thread is getting a bit political, and I know I'm not exactly helping...

NiceCupOfTea said...
So if competition is so good, why does the US have the worst and most expensive healthcare system in the developed world, while countries with mostly state-funded healthcare have the best and most cost-efficient healthcare systems?

Lobbying of lawmakers by Pharma and insurance companies allows the US to charge it's citizens higher prices than any other country in the world while at the same time restricting access to poorer populations. Worst of all possible worlds and it will be changing as baby boomers age and face this reality, it has already begun. My cohort (I am a Boomer) is large and getting mad enough "not to take this any more".

NiceCupOfTea said...
So if competition is so good, why does the US have the worst and most expensive healthcare system in the developed world, while countries with mostly state-funded healthcare have the best and most cost-efficient healthcare systems?

Refer to the Obamacare project that was started but not finished, and there you have it. I still stand by my country over others for the freedoms we do have though.

There is no transparency about this program. I could never afford it, and as a healthy adult, I would never meet the $1000 deductible, and from a business perspective, could never afford this outrageous plan for my employees because the insane cost -- ask my sister who owns a business. And, this is why people today are complaining of lack of job security, and wanting higher pay, because everyone voted to inject government into business and now businesses can't afford to survive all that well. It's a terrible thing to make a young person who's healthy and well be forced to buy into healthcare right out of college.

Post Edited (stereofidelic89) : 9/29/2016 11:03:09 AM (GMT-6)