Subtle things that the new healthcare reform cost us.

[alkemyst]

Some things are just stupid in this...insurance is based on maximum and typical payouts. By removing the lifetime cap (many policies were already at $2 million or more) you are requiring companies to buy insurance that is far beyond even a RARE need.

Then you have the Flexible Spending limits...it used to be you could put aside tax deferred income for health care costs at up to $3500/yr. It's a use it or lose it system. Now it's been capped at $2500. Sounds good to the poor as $2500 is a lot of money, but this was useful for middle class families with constant care needed or looking at dental work.

I really don't agree with this socialist style belief. Unfortunately the poor votes outnumber the better class.

The sad part is many that voted for this were already getting benefits equal to the new plan.

 

[theeedude]

If the need is as RARE as you claim, buying policy to insure for it should cost next to nothing. Do you see the poor as the worse class?

 

[her209]

Then you have the Flexible Spending limits...it used to be you could put aside tax deferred income for health care costs at up to $3500/yr. It's a use it or lose it system. Now it's been capped at $2500. Sounds good to the poor as $2500 is a lot of money, but this was useful for middle class families with constant care needed or looking at dental work.

According to this, the max contribution limit was set by the plan.

 

[alkemyst]

If the need is as RARE as you claim, buying policy to insure for it should cost next to nothing. Do you see the poor as the worse class?

Except people tend to take advantage of things like this. I have two very close friends that hired more or less handicapped people to do a job. They are now bound on certain terms they cannot fire this people on.

They got the highest rate of pay offered as well for the jobs.

Both text/surf the web on iPhones during the day and both have been caught sleeping on the job. Both blame their conditions and can get doctor's notes to side with them.

Everytime they see the doctor he makes money, they make money, we all pay for it.

In the case of my own company, we are self-insured. We have paid out above and beyond the limits our policies offered in special cases. Having to require us to do so hampers our whole plan. We were already doing a lot of what is now required (pre-exisiting conditions could be brought in each year at open enrollment, adding adult children that are now living at the parental home, etc)...we are now getting fucked. We had a really great plan.

Another friend is getting fucked on this too. He had 100% coverage for all family members already. No one at his company had to pay a dime for coverage. They also had the first $2000 in claims covered free and a $20 copay system up to the next $1000 (or so?)...after than they paid 10% of coverage for the rest. They were capped at a couple million bucks life time. Their plan now requires spouse and family contributions. The employee is still covered free.

 

[alkemyst]

According to this, the max contribution limit was set by the plan.

there is more to the law on that than just posted there.

I work for a home builder, we are currently falling under 'golden parachute' law.

We got rid of a lot of worker bee types to keep multi-role employees on staff. Our upper management took payroll deductions to their salaries to stay on board, still we are top-heavy.

Unfortunately, our real labor is all contracted. It doesn't help our 'payroll' outlines.

 

[theeedude]

Except people tend to take advantage of things like this. I have two very close friends that hired more or less handicapped people to do a job. They are now bound on certain terms they cannot fire this people on.

They got the highest rate of pay offered as well for the jobs.

Both text/surf the web on iPhones during the day and both have been caught sleeping on the job. Both blame their conditions and can get doctor's notes to side with them.

Everytime they see the doctor he makes money, they make money, we all pay for it.

In the case of my own company, we are self-insured. We have paid out above and beyond the limits our policies offered in special cases. Having to require us to do so hampers our whole plan. We were already doing a lot of what is now required (pre-exisiting conditions could be brought in each year at open enrollment, adding adult children that are now living at the parental home, etc)...we are now getting fucked. We had a really great plan.

Another friend is getting fucked on this too. He had 100% coverage for all family members already. No one at his company had to pay a dime for coverage. They also had the first $2000 in claims covered free and a $20 copay system up to the next $1000 (or so?)...after than they paid 10% of coverage for the rest. They were capped at a couple million bucks life time. Their plan now requires spouse and family contributions. The employee is still covered free.

You still have not demonstrated that lifetime cap caused this. I seem to recall our very own BCBS wanted to raise premiums 39% even before any bill passed. Now if you are a sick patient barely able to afford insurance to begin with, how can you absorb this increase?

 

[RightIsWrong]

Oh me oh my. Those poor little insurance companies are going to have to lose some of their profits from denying legitimate claims and then using the financial advantages that they have over a single person to drag it out in court because it is cheaper than paying the claim?

The tactic is called the "Three Ds", "Deny, Delay and Defend"

Here's a factcheck.org story on the amount of profits that health insurers are making:

UnitedHealth Group had reported its earnings for the second quarter of 2009, which beat analysts’ expectations with profit of $859 million

Humana Inc. logged a quarterly profit of almost $282 million.

Aetna came in at $347 million in profit for the quarter

Health Net logged a $40 million profit in the spring quarter

Wellpoint’s $693 million for the quarter

Coventry Health Care Inc. wasn’t breaking any records, with second quarter profit of about $18 million

CIGNA’s balance sheet showed second quarter profit of $435 million

Don't miss that those are QUARTERLY profits and not annual.

What ever will they do?

 

[Engineer]

"better class"?

 

[RightIsWrong]

"better class"?

I know, right? And it's the left that is the elitist class.

 

[Red Dawn]

"better class"?

If Alky's part of it how can it be better?

 

[alkemyst]

just an fyi to those that didn't read...my company is self-insured, there are no 'profits'.

we have to follow suit.

and yes better class is the proper term, there is a reason the poor fill our prisons...they feel entitled.

i have been poor, my parents as well...

 

[RightIsWrong]

and yes better class is the proper term, there is a reason the poor fill our prisons...they feel entitled.

You don't think that the poor "fill our prisons" for other reasons? Like maybe they cannot afford proper legal representation or that the legal aid lawyer that was assigned to them and 75 other cases at the same time cannot devote enough time to truly prepare a proper defense?

Here's a question for you....how many "better class" people have had been acquitted after evidence came to light that they were innocent? I don't know of any. When a "better class" person is convicted, be it of insider trading, embezzlement, murdering their spouse, or anything else, they are there for the duration.

There have been literally thousands of cases where the "worse class" members were found innocent after the fact.

As for feeling entitled, tell the corporations that they no longer get a single deduction or a single dollar of federal money and see who will cry louder, them or "the entitled-feeling worse class".

 

[her209]

there is more to the law on that than just posted there.

I work for a home builder, we are currently falling under 'golden parachute' law.

We got rid of a lot of worker bee types to keep multi-role employees on staff. Our upper management took payroll deductions to their salaries to stay on board, still we are top-heavy.

Unfortunately, our real labor is all contracted. It doesn't help our 'payroll' outlines.

A link to applicable section of law would be nice.

 

[alkemyst]

You still have not demonstrated that lifetime cap caused this. I seem to recall our very own BCBS wanted to raise premiums 39% even before any bill passed. Now if you are a sick patient barely able to afford insurance to begin with, how can you absorb this increase?

These changes directly cost us because we have to budget for the worst case scenarios.

If you can't afford insurance yet don't qualify for the free government aid, then you are spending foolishly.

 

[alkemyst]

You don't think that the poor "fill our prisons" for other reasons? Like maybe they cannot afford proper legal representation or that the legal aid lawyer that was assigned to them and 75 other cases at the same time cannot devote enough time to truly prepare a proper defense?

Here's a question for you....how many "better class" people have had been acquitted after evidence came to light that they were innocent? I don't know of any. When a "better class" person is convicted, be it of insider trading, embezzlement, murdering their spouse, or anything else, they are there for the duration.

There have been literally thousands of cases where the "worse class" members were found innocent after the fact.

As for feeling entitled, tell the corporations that they no longer get a single deduction or a single dollar of federal money and see who will cry louder, them or "the entitled-feeling worse class".

I am talking about the common crimes of car jacking, burgulary and robbery. Can't say these are middle class crimes.

You are now going off on an unrelated tangent.

I never said all the poor are bad, as a whole though you will encounter this.

 

[alkemyst]

A link to applicable section of law would be nice.

What are you looking for exactly? Law on top heavy companies or other...it's not a simple linkable thing.

 

[CPA]

Then you have the Flexible Spending limits...it used to be you could put aside tax deferred income for health care costs at up to $3500/yr. It's a use it or lose it system. Now it's been capped at $2500. Sounds good to the poor as $2500 is a lot of money, but this was useful for middle class families with constant care needed or looking at dental work.

And this is where Obama lies about tax increases. You can argue to your blue in the face whether or not middle class folks should even have an FSA, but the point is Obama has stated over and over that only people making over $250K would see their taxes go up. However, a reduction in FSA is a "tax increase" on everyone who uses it.

 

[Carmen813]

Some things are just stupid in this...insurance is based on maximum and typical payouts. By removing the lifetime cap (many policies were already at $2 million or more) you are requiring companies to buy insurance that is far beyond even a RARE need.

Then you have the Flexible Spending limits...it used to be you could put aside tax deferred income for health care costs at up to $3500/yr. It's a use it or lose it system. Now it's been capped at $2500. Sounds good to the poor as $2500 is a lot of money, but this was useful for middle class families with constant care needed or looking at dental work.

I really don't agree with this socialist style belief. Unfortunately the poor votes outnumber the better class.

The sad part is many that voted for this were already getting benefits equal to the new plan.

2/3 men and 1/3 women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. This hardly qualifies as a "rare" need. Treatment costs routinely top $1 million in only a six month period, sometimes within a ONE month period. Then you are looking at a minimum of five years of intense follow up care and yearly check ups for life. Speaking as a 26 year old cancer survivor, I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that they removed these arbitrary and discriminatory limitations. Cancer is only one category of diseases that have this level of cost associated with it.

This is hardly socialism, it's common sense. Then again, the very concept of insurance basically is socialism, so I'm not entirely sure why you even brought that into the conversation. Spend some more time learning about how much health care costs for catastrophic illnesses (which is what insurance exists to cover in the first place) before you go off on a completely biased rant.

We put poor people in prison because we would rather hide them from society at large. I'm not talking about violent crimes, which are a FRACTION of the total prison population, but those other "unmentionables." "Out of sight, out of mind" as the old saying goes...it's easier to pretend a problem doesn't exist then to acknowledge and solve it. Once you learn about the tremendous amount cooperation between private-public sector companies, and the insane amount of money involved, you would probably vomit. We've someone found a way to legalize slavery.

 

[alkemyst]

CPA, very true...but most of the masses don't understand that.

 

[alkemyst]

2/3 men and 1/3 women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. This hardly qualifies as a "rare" need. Treatment costs routinely top $1 million in only a six month period, sometimes within a ONE month period. Then you are looking at a minimum of five years of intense follow up care and yearly check ups for life. Speaking as a 26 year old cancer survivor, I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that they removed these arbitrary and discriminatory limitations. Cancer is only one category of diseases that have this level of cost associated with it.

This is hardly socialism, it's common sense. Then again, the very concept of insurance basically is socialism, so I'm not entirely sure why you even brought that into the conversation. Spend some more time learning about how much health care costs for catastrophic illnesses (which is what insurance exists to cover in the first place) before you go off on a completely biased rant.

We put poor people in prison because we would rather hide them from society at large. I'm not talking about violent crimes, which are a FRACTION of the total prison population, but those other "unmentionables." "Out of sight, out of mind" as the old saying goes...it's easier to pretend a problem doesn't exist then to acknowledge and solve it. Once you learn about the tremendous amount cooperation between private-public sector companies, and the insane amount of money involved, you would probably vomit. We've someone found a way to legalize slavery.

My mother has had cancer twice. Neither time did treatment approach 1 million.

Still one is able to go out and buy additional catatrophic insurance if they wanted, now we are all required to pay for it.

Just so you know my history, most of my family friends and relatives are involved in the medical industry. I was supposed to do medical school growing up.

I know about hospital and treatment costs.

 

[Carmen813]

My mother has had cancer twice. Neither time did treatment approach 1 million.

Still one is able to go out and buy additional catatrophic insurance if they wanted, now we are all required to pay for it.

Just so you know my history, most of my family friends and relatives are involved in the medical industry. I was supposed to do medical school growing up.

I know about hospital and treatment costs.

My wife had leukemia and her one month hospital stay cost just under $1 million. That didn't even count the costs that came up over the following five months. My own cost for Hodgkin's Lymphoma was around $800,000. None of this includes the fact that my wife will require medication for the rest of her life, or that I will require yearly CT/PET scans.

Going out and by catastrophic coverage once you've become ill is basically impossible. It was impossible to buy it before I became ill because I was a college student and hadn't yet started my career, thus I had no money. Due to bad luck, I will never be able to buy life insurance or any of the other things you take for granted.

The very reason insurance exists is for catastrophic costs. You could argue that part of the problem is that routine care has started to be included, which is driving up costs, but I personally think preventative medicine is helping lower costs over the long term.

You will almost certainly not put more into the insurance system than you take out, assuming you life a normal life. Include your employer contribution as well, it makes no difference. Insurance is individuals grouping into a collective where the healthy pay for the cost of treating the sick. It's done for the security in knowing that when its your turn to be sick, you will have access to care. It is, by it's very definition, socialism. Attacking it for being such is simply silly.

This is the problem with living in an individualistic, me first society. People don't see the big picture.

 

[PeshakJang]

2/3 men and 1/3 women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. This hardly qualifies as a "rare" need. Treatment costs routinely top $1 million in only a six month period, sometimes within a ONE month period. Then you are looking at a minimum of five years of intense follow up care and yearly check ups for life. Speaking as a 26 year old cancer survivor, I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that they removed these arbitrary and discriminatory limitations. Cancer is only one category of diseases that have this level of cost associated with it.

Smart individuals would realize these statistics and buy additional coverage. I have a separate cancer coverage policy, which costs about $26/month, and will cover all treatment in the event I get cancer, and also includes many additional benefits to help cover bills, hotel stays for my family, specialized treatments, loss of income, etc. Basically, as morbid as it sounds, I will almost make money if I get cancer. Also, every 20 years, my premiums are returned to me as a lump-sum.

Anybody can buy a policy like this. If somebody wants to gamble with fate and doesn't realize what their current policy does/doesn't cover, then they are the only ones to blame.

Also, please tell me, with cancer rates increasing so significantly in the last few decades, how do people expect costs to remain the same/go down? Everyone complains that costs are going up up up, but they choose to blame the insurance companies making very slim profit percentages, rather than the fact that people are getting sicker and sicker.

 

[RightIsWrong]

I am talking about the common crimes of car jacking, burgulary and robbery. Can't say these are middle class crimes.

You are now going off on an unrelated tangent.

I never said all the poor are bad, as a whole though you will encounter this.

Why do you get to pick and choose what are considered crimes that actually count when you are attempting to denigrate an entire subsection of the population?

But I'll play along and appease you just the same.

Here's a common definition of the term robbery:

The act or an instance of unlawfully taking the property of another by the use of violence or intimidation

Would you say that the United States as a whole is guilty of robbery of other countries natural resources via the use of violence (in the case of Iraq) or by intimidation (do what we say or we won't "protect" you from the evil regimes out there!)? A very strong argument could be made that a lot of the things that we have gained are a result of this. Who perpetrates these wars and policies? Is it the very poor?

Here's a common definition of burglary:

The act of entering a building or other premises with the intent to commit theft.

Can it not be said that every single CEO, board member, embezzler, inside trader, member of upper management that had very personal knowledge of the fact that crimes were being committed against the company, its shareholders or its customers were committing burglary under that very broad definition?

The problem with you is that you are trying to pull a "No true Scotsman" fallacy and narrow the field by using semantically framed arguments.

You first claim that the poor fill the prisons because they are all deadbeats and when I counter that a great majority of the poor are acquitted after the fact than those in the "better class", you try to move the goalposts by limiting what you consider "common crimes". Now, I am telling you that there is no difference between someone entering a private residence with the intent to steal/rob and a person in a $1000 suit walking into a corporate headquarters with the intent of filing a falsified income statement with the intent to rob investors of their money.

Let's hear the further rationalization that is sure to come.

 

[RightIsWrong]

Smart individuals would realize these statistics and buy additional coverage. I have a separate cancer coverage policy, which costs about $26/month, and will cover all treatment in the event I get cancer, and also includes many additional benefits to help cover bills, hotel stays for my family, specialized treatments, loss of income, etc. Basically, as morbid as it sounds, I will almost make money if I get cancer. Also, every 20 years, my premiums are returned to me as a lump-sum.

Anybody can buy a policy like this. If somebody wants to gamble with fate and doesn't realize what their current policy does/doesn't cover, then they are the only ones to blame.

Also, please tell me, with cancer rates increasing so significantly in the last few decades, how do people expect costs to remain the same/go down? Everyone complains that costs are going up up up, but they choose to blame the insurance companies making very slim profit percentages, rather than the fact that people are getting sicker and sicker.

Before you start jumping for joy, you might want to look at the fine print:

Here's Mutual of Omaha's cancer insurance homepage:

https://www.cancer-coverage.com/

Here's what is in almost indistinguishable font color as the background:

THIS IS A CANCER ONLY POLICY.
This policy contains exclusions, limitations, and reductions.

Here's what is in AFLAC's cancer insurance brochure for the state of TX:

http://www.aflac.com/cancer_insurance/default.aspx

The policy has limitations that may affect benefits payable.

How about Humana? I'm sure that they are different?

Cash Cancer Plan is for protection in the event you’re diagnosed with cancer in the future. Please don’t apply for this plan if you’ve ever been diagnosed with cancer.

I guess you're SOL if you've already been diagnosed.

Conseco offers a cancer policy....of course there are very low limits:

http://www.conseco.com/wsc/health/cancer.shtml

 

[Modelworks]

They need to change the name of the entire industry. It isn't insurance anymore. It should be AFLAC Credit Union . That is all the health care 'insurance' companies are. finance plans for everyday health cost, not for unexpected cost which was the reason they were created.