The insurance isn't going to be more affordable for the 2.6 million though is the point that people are missing. If you are relatively young and healthy your rates are not going down. Guaranteed. And when those people don't buy in, the entire premise that was used to artificially lower the cost for the older and sick will be gone and the rates collapse.
The subsidies are going to allow the insurance to be more affordable. I'm also guessing not all of those 2.6M are young and healthy.
How many of the 2.6 million are in the poor category that will now get subsidies, making the insurance cheaper for them even if the rate doesn't change? What makes you think they won't buy in? It seems all the companies that are offering said insurance certainly believe differently based on the rates they are offering. And they almost universally did in MA, with just small penalties. Many of those young & healthy will get subsidies.
Some will, some won't. Sadly, there are probably a large number of them that already qualify for aid, but do not take advantage of it.
http://www.nber.org/digest/nov10/w16012.html In The Impact of Health Care Reform on Hospital and Preventive Care: Evidence from Massachusetts (NBER Working Paper No. 16012), co-authors Jonathan Kolstad and Amanda Kowalski note that the Massachusetts changes undertaken in 2006 present a novel opportunity for analyzing the impact of a mandated expansion in health insurance coverage more generally – and perhaps for predicting the effect of the federal bill. Using hospital discharge data, they conclude that the Commonwealth’s health insurance reform reduced the number of uninsured among the inpatient hospital population by 36 percent. The reform increased coverage most among: young adults and the near elderly, men, people from the lowest-income zip codes, and people identified as black and Hispanic.
I don't know what to make of that number because the raw data isn't include. What was the total before that was reduced by 36%? 36% reduction might not actually be significant. Total coverage in MA was over 90% before the healthcare reform law. Also, a reduction in rates in NY is good obviously, but it doesn't mean much to a 20 something in Texas who will see rates explode but isn't poor enough to get a subsidy. A family of four that makes 100k will not get a subsidy, but it will sure feel like you're poor when your insurance cost jumps.
Total uninsured went from about 10% to 5% within a year of implementation of the law. So you're talking small numbers, but it shows that people that were uninsured chose to become insured, despite the threat of only tiny penalties. And young people were amongst the group that did so the most. So the idea that young people will simply not sign up isn't backed up by the (limited) data we have. That's all certainly possible, but all theoretical right now. The two states that we have data for - covering over 60 million people - have projected noticable drops in prices. And the two states cover wide demographics and substantially different starting points: NY had very restrictive laws and expensive insurance. California had relatively cheap insurance prior to this. We don't know yet what will happen with the Texas individual market because Texas dragged its feet on the exchange before finally asking the federal government to do it.
If you can't trust the guys who brought us unskewed polling like commodore mcbasso - who can you trust.
RE your bolded, this shouldn't come as a surprise parents with access to employer health plans would easily add their 23 to 26 yr olds; after all, they were all in school piling up the student loan debt and couldn't find jobs from 2008 to 2011
Touche. MA is a unique state. One of the higher per capita & educational rates for a state in the country. It's also a very homogenous population as opposed to a Texas or Louisiana.
Agreed - at this point, we have fairly limited real-world data. But we do have two (limited) data points: 1. When given the opportunity and incentives in MA, people did sign up for insurance, and of those, young people did so in above-average numbers. 2. The insurers that are offering plans on exchanges in both CA and NY (both very diverse states) seem to believe that young, healthy people will be signing up based on the rates they are offering. Right now, there's simply no real evidence that I know of to support the idea that, if given opportunities and incentives (subsidies and penalties), young people won't sign up.
Here's an article with more specifics on the NY rates: http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/17/new...ealth-insurance-new-york/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 Of note: But under Obamacare, healthier residents are expected to flood the individual market to avoid paying the penalty. The state is expecting more than 600,000 people to enter the exchanges, with about 70% of them eligible for federal subsidies. "The people who are going to come in are healthy people who can't afford the coverage now," said Gary Claxton, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "That will substantially lower the average cost of care."
Oregon's exchange is nearly up and running. I recently received an email pointing to the exchange website and have provided a link to the rates for the silver plan. http://coveroregon.com/pdfs/cover_oregon_plans_premiums.pdf I purchased individual coverage for my family for many years, and can report that the proposed rates are lower than the rates I was paying 10 years ago. it's interesting that they have tied the max out of pocket expenses for the year to income.
Correct. You can't really compare it to a company plan, as the company is paying (usually) the majority of the premium. The cost of the plan depends on your income.
