There is a big difference between universal and something that makes no sense whatsoever. The odds are much greater that someone under 60 would develop Alzheimer's or that a smoker would develop lung cancer than a 55 year old male would need maternity coverage. A lot of this law is just plain nonsense.
So we met with our health insurance broker yesterday on our new health insurance costs. We use health savings accounts with high deductible plans which will explain why our costs are less than what others may be experiencing. We contribute to each person's health savings account to help defray the high deductible amounts. So here's the bottom line. Our costs did not go up 50%. They went up 47% for singles and 48.5% for family coverage. Our singles were $263 a month and now they are $384. Our family coverage was $736 and now it's $1,093. For now we will continue to pay 100% of the health insurance costs for our employees, but if we have another year of this type of increase then we may have to stop paying for all of it. To add to the wonders of Obamacare, a client called me with her problem with the new health care mandates. She is married and age 62 and her husband is 67 and on Medicare. She has no taxable income and some non-taxable income. Under the new mandates her medical insurance has gone from $2,400 a year to over $6,000 a year. More than a little bit sad when something like this happens.
Our insurance is only going up a small percentage this year... luckily... But we use HSA's and HDHP's as well.. I tried looking into obamacare on the new site... Would be $400/week with a $12600 deductible... vs $105/week including funding a 6k deductible.
Perfect example Steve. Why would those people want those coverage on their policy? I had great insurance until Jan. 1 of this year. Obama care killed that. They called my insurance a Cadillac plan and tried to tax the company I work for $11,000,000 that's right 11 million. in excise taxes. The company said no thanks and stopped offering the plan. In other words when you hear Obama say that Obama care only effects 20% of the population because the other 80% have insurance that is just another lie. To make the world more fair Obama found the need to punish the companies that gave their employees to good of insurance. Can anyone explain how that makes sense?
X2 R&A, you're spot on. Unfortunately companies that provided good insurance to their employees are getting penalized - not unlike society's current path in the US. Work hard, provide better than average living and get dinged for it. There is no incentive to work hard now when everything else can be given to you if you don't. That's a whole other thread though. I digress....
Hugely complex issue. Must admit I don't fully understand how Obamacare works (or doesn't work) myself. True social healthcare like we have in the UK and Canada works great. You should try it. Looking at the prices people are paying for insurance, I know I paid much less than that back in the UK (automatically deducted from my pay check) and the standard is at least equivalent to that in the US and available to 100% of the population. Seems to me it's a bastardized version of proper social healthcare. I wonder who you can thank for that.
My guess is that the insurance companies had a huge hand in how this thing got structured. Add to it, the fact that apparently no one read the damn thing before they passed it and in three and a half years they still couldn't figure out how it should work. Bottom line is that it is a royal mess that isn't going to help an already sick health care system. In case no one has noticed Obama is no longer calling it Obamacare, but not is using the Affordable Care Act name. No matter what you call it, it is a major league disaster at this point.
