US Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Health Care Act

[Roland]

I'll be waiting to see what effect "Obamacare" has on this. If it becomes more viable to purchase medical insurance as an individual due to the exchanges that will be set up, will employer health care plans start to disappear? Individuals would have more freedom and wouldn't be tied to whatever plan their employer decides to choose, which you're currently stuck with.

Time will tell.

It'll suck just as much as Romneycare does. You'll get to enroll twice a year, within a limited window, and if you miss it - oh well! Guess you'll have to pay a penalty since you weren't covered by insurance for the majority of the year. (There are exemptions, and it's not *that* hard to qualify for one, but basically that's how it works.) Also, you'll have no recourse when your insurance rate jumps 11% from one month to the next (like mine just did, after issuing me a rebate check for some reason - I'll quote the letter: "Both federal and state laws require health insurers to spend a minimum percentage of the premium dollar on medical expenses, referred to as medical loss ratio or MLR. If an insurer's MLR falls below set levels, the insurer must issue a rebate. While Harvard Pilgrim the exceeded federal minimum requirement of 80% for 2011, they fell slightly below the state threshold of 88% for the Massachusetts market. As a result, Commonwealth Choise has issued a rebate check, on behalf of Harvard Pilgrim, to the employer who provided your health insurance in 2011 (which was solely myself, not my employer, since employer-sponsored insurance wasn't available! Another great Romneycare bullshit add-on!)." So, basically they didn't spend enough of MY money on MY health, therefore they issue me a rebate check - for an amount VERY similar to the rate increase I just incurred).

Health insurance exchanges SOUND nice on paper. You get all the insurance companies (or, at least the ones who bent to the state and agreed to insure us here - the rest packed up and left for greener pastures) together, get to pick your health insurance "package" via a fucked-up Tier system (Bronze, Silver, and Gold - but there are some Gold packages that are worse than some Silver yet cost more, and the same goes for some Silver packages over Bronze, so you have to pay VERY close attention to what you're getting). Your price is determined by status (single, married, family), as well as age - and you can guess how quickly it goes up on those factors. Myself, I WAS paying ~$295 per month. Now, I'm paying ~$327 per month. One of my old co-workers (single, no kids, no spouse, nothing) - for the same package - would have been paying well over $800, all because he's ~61. A 49-year old co-worker with a wife and 2 kids would have been paying well over $1200 per month. The other old co-worker, same size family but about 6 or 7 years older, was over $1800 a month - and these were all mid-level Silver packages.

Yeah, health exchanges are great. Before, businesses could do nothing against 28% health insurance rate increases year after year (no, I'm not exaggerating). Now, we get to pay as individuals, and we STILL can't do anything about rate increases - except, MAYBE, switch to a lower-quality plan. Which doesn't even cover what this whole exercise is costing the state (the government loves to say it's fine, but I've heard too many rumblings that it's costs are WAY over budget, and rising yearly).

I don't know what the right answer is, but what I do know is that I've been forced to have insurance for the last few years. Back when I got it through my employer we used to have double-digit percentage increases year after year (our Attorney General even tried to stand up to the collective insurance agencies {yes, they banded together}, and lost - that should tell you something). When they stopped providing insurance to our business (without telling us, mind you, until we had already lapsed) because they simply "couldn't" provide us with the same insurance we had the previous year (or month) - something to do with the location of our employees being in too many different towns (and we only had 5 employees), or too far away from one another - then we all had to go on our own individual plans. Unfortunately, we missed the cutoff date because no one notified the business that we couldn't renew our insurance. Thankfully, because we HAD been insured the prior month, we got in under an exemption, and were only without insurance 1 month. Now that I've been enrolled for a little over a year, and the new enrollment period starts at the end of this month, my provider has decided to jack up the rate - since they did SO good a job last year spending my money on health care that they had to give me a rebate.

Sorry, just had to rant. Really, really had to rant. I just get off unemployment after being out of work for 2 months, finally collect my first paycheck (while losing a paycheck in the interim because pay is delayed 1 week, and I can't file unemployment when I'm earning more than I collect), and now I get slapped with an unannounced rate increase on my mandatory insurance. I can always change companies / plans though, if I so desire! Which does me NO good because all the companies within a certain package within each tier are priced essentially the same for the same service (isn't price collusion illegal? ) So, yeah, little pissed off at the moment about healthcare. Excuse my venting.