Remember all of the promises you were told when politicians were attempting to pass the Affordable Care Act?  Can you recall all of the great benefits we'd see with the passage of the landmark piece of legislation?  I certainly remember many of the lofty goals and utopian outcomes our leaders told us would come to pass if we simply trusted government to take the reins of one our biggest national industries.

While we must allow the law to really make its impact felt before we can make a final judgment on the merits of its ability to improve healthcare quality and increase accessibility, we can weigh in on the major area that all of us feel monthly, which is our health insurance premiums. 

As we've noted several times in the last month, Open Enrollment begins this weekend and we'll be able to get our first view of the pricing of 2015 health insurance plans.  Fortunately, I've been able to get an advanced look at what we'll call "solid estimates" and the results are frankly.....exactly the same as before or worse!  In the past years before Obamacare we would typically expect annual rate increases of 6% to 10% each year.  Sometimes those rates would only climb 4%, and bad years would see 12% hikes.  We've all been told that the Affordable Care Act would "bend the cost curve" and make healthcare more affordable since services would be spread across a larger pool of insured people as the losses providers felt from serving the uninsured went away.  Unfortunately, we're too early to see any real impact or we were simply lied to.

The end of the year is typically marked by trying to close business deals and get holiday preparations complete.  The last thing we want is a few suprises to interupt our plans or cause us to get distracted.  November 15th will bring the beginning of this year's Open Enrollment and all of Texas Health Design's existing clients will receive new quotes that provide a snapshot of all the plans and companies available for the coming year.  As we've begun our preparations to serve our clients we wanted to bring your attention to a few suprises that are in store for health insurance shoppers for the coming 2015 plan year.

With 14 days left in this Special Open Enrollment period for the initial sign up period of the Affordable Care Act I feel a bit exhausted and vindicated that many of my predictions about the roll out have come to fruition. This post isn't about "I was right", it is really about perspective and trying to craft a strategy that will help us navigate the current environment.

Let me dive straight in and offer a quick summary of the current situation and provide some guidance.

We are nearing a few important dates that you need to know to prepare yourself and your family. We are clearly in a period where procrastination will be costly so you must take action to prevent overpaying or missing out on having coverage.

Still A Mess

We are almost 7 weeks into the rollout of Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) and I think we can agree that the execution of the implementation has been less than perfect. There are many issues that persist with the ability to access the Healthcare.gov website as connectivity has been brought down to try to fix the structural issues with the flawed portal.

In this post I want to highlight some misconceptions I am seeing that you need to know about right now.

We've all heard that problems with the Healthcare.gov website were being addressed and our leaders are just as angry as consumers are in dealing with this issue. We're patted on the head and told that we need to be patient and everything will be fixed.

Our team is on the phone almost all day long. We speak to so many wonderfully unique Texans that range from health experts to lost searchers needing assistance. We love the diversity of clients that reach out to us and we have made incredible friends with many of them. Interestingly, every conversations we have lately includes some untruth that people have heard or some myth that they've been "sold". To kick off another week of blissful Open Enrollment, we wanted to highlight 9 myths we've heard and try to find some clarity amid all of the noise.

The "Obamacare" experience has been less than advertised so far for many US citizens looking for health insurance. The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services have been quiet about the actual rates of enrollment over the last two weeks, but clearly the real figures can't be good, or else we would have been told the great news.

Our offices have received many calls from clients this week wondering what the real impact would be on health insurance premiums, or more accurately stated, would they save any money!