Healthcare

2015 Obamacare Pricing Analysis - Where's The Savings?

House of Card - ACA Pricing Analysis - Rate Increase Again

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 Countdown Begins! An Affordable Care Act Summary

It's Almost Here!

As of now (January 2013), several aspects of the ACA (Affordable Care Act or Patient Protection Act or "Obamacare") have been implemented. First, children under the age of 19 with any pre-existing condition can now be insured and an insurance company cannot decline them. Second, all plans now must now cover 100% of a policy holder's preventative care expenses without co-pay or deductible. Finally, insurance companies have also been forced to adhere to the 80% MLR rule where they must pay at least 80% of all premiums received to patient medical claims.