Except it's not really doing any sort of pooling, it's just using the community rating system that blew up rates in Mass to make it so that there is no "discrimination" in the health rates. The individual mandate section of Obamacare is the only part that could drive down costs but it doesn't have the teeth in it to make it tremendously effective. Edit: There's also a donut hole in the individual mandate. The individual mandate only actually mandates that you buy coverage if coverage is available that meets the Obamacare "affordability" test. For those families making between $100 and $150 thousand dollars a year (approx) there won't be coverage available on the marketplaces that meets the affordability rule and you will be too rich for a subsidy. Therefore you will likely be exempt from the mandate.
How is saying something was true for "lots of people" a blanket generalization? And how is the fact that you're not one of those relevant to anything? I didn't remotely say it applies to everyone. That is absolutely true. But at the same time, a slew of young, healthy people will be entering the system, which has the potential to reduce the average cost of insurance as a whole. So yes, the insurers need to bring in more money - having millions of new healthy customers is one avenue to do it. At this point, we really don't know how it will play out. We know that according to justtx's data, Texas premiums will rise a lot. We know that in CA, that doesn't appear to be the case (even accounting for the apples-to-oranges comparisons used). One significant factor there is that that California has done everything it can to implement the law quickly and properly, while Texas has not. So it may be as much the fault of the state as the law. It will be interesting to see how rates change in blue vs red states, and also in states that expand Medicaid and those that don't (leaving a huge uninsured population, which jacks up costs).
That may be true in some cases, but not always. For example, from all the links below, it seems like California consistently has had below-average insurance premiums. Not sure the reasons or the detail of any of these studies though. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/site_docs/slideshows/PremiumTrends/PremiumTrends.html http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/individual-premiums/ http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/health/health-insurance-premiums.aspx http://www.zanebenefits.com/blog/bid/259737/Average-Group-Health-Insurance-Costs-by-State
FWIW there is an actual exception in the IRS code for professional traders. I was drunk last night...You are right we just can't have the group plans but we can have individual plans. The main reason why we had to drop our group plan was that 75% rule in Texas.
So anyhow....what is the general cost savings for comparable ACA plans versus individual plans that already exist?
The proposition that the overall costs of health care will decrease at a time when, overall, our population is aging (boomers entering retirement years) is...interesting.
To the extent that basic addition and subtraction are assumptions...sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Except an aging population has nothing to do with Obamacare - that is happening independently and is neither new information or unique to this year. I would hope when you're discussing Obamacare's effect on health care costs, you wouldn't blame it for factors out of its control.
Except it's not simple addition and subtraction. You continue to ignore the # of people paying into the system. If more people pay - and the new people cost less than average - then the average cost can go down. Add some multiplication and division to your math and you get different results from your simple "cost must go up" math.
Obamacare did not cause the aging population, but that factor will affect premiums. Older people cost more in health care costs. Obamacare does not allow for discriminatory pricing, so their additional costs will be borne by the rest of us in premiums. To ignore the aging population and its effect on premiums is folly.
By and large, the law sought to address the uninsured problem. Many of those people are uninsured because they cannot get insurance for their pre-existing conditions. Your argument based solely on apples to apples economies of scale I believe is fundamentally flawed.
Yes, like ME? Staying at an increasingly irritable job because I developed conditions there that their decent insurance covered. And that if I moved into another place's group coverage or out of it completely and got independent coverage, then the premium would rise a good chunk from my "pre-existing" conditions. So "currently has affordable coverage" WAS a factor in my decision in staying or going (I'm gone from that job anyway so whatever. Though maybe "happiness" is something that maybe money doesnt or shouldnt factor into, but thats a WHOLE other separate topic ) And I'm skeptical of the "GUARANTEE!" til I see it. But its all least its some nice rhetoric
Certainly that's how it was marketed for, for reasons I will never understand. But it also contains a number of things aimed at driving down costs, although much of that is experimental and won't really take effect nationwide for a while - and its unclear what impact will be had. And many are uninsured because they are young and healthy and choose it. How the two will balance out is unclear. Possibly true - but no more so than arguing simplistic math or bringing up an aging population as a fault of Obamacare. The reality is that we now know that, in a diverse state with more than 10% of the US population that made a concerted effort to implement the law properly, similar insurance policies appear to generally cost the same or less under the new system than the old. And based on justtx's internal data, the opposite will be true in an equally large and diverse state in Texas that has made zero effort to implement the law. Those two data points are really all we have so far, and they are widely divergent.
My data was merely based on small group statistics, not individual. The lack of haste with which Texas has implemented parts of the law plays no role on the pricing for small group. All that pricing is based on the companies implementing the law. The only thing Perry the problem fairy made complicated was refusing to define small group in the state until the last second.
I understand there is a loophole that was not intended. Congress should fix that but that won't happen. My guess is that particular loophole is not going to be significant though. The bigger concern is, even without the loophole, how many % of healthy folks will "cheat" and not buy anyway until they need it. MA seems to suggest a very low % but will that translate to the US as a whole? As for the pooling, how is that different today for group (large one to be more comparable), where you can't discriminate and you must provide coverage to all within the group and rates are not different for individuals within the group?
