The new Texas BCBS Advantage HMO plan is crap. It uses a different - and vastly smaller - network than their PPO plan from previous years. I had their PPO plan this last year and it was fantastic - though they messed up the billing for every single thing I did (PCP visits, specialist visits, X-Rays, MRIs, Labwork, etc). Oddly, they messed up every single thing in my favor - which is probably a large part of why they failed. I'm not sure if they got a slow start with the new HMO network or if they are offering garbage reimbursements to doctors, but none of doctors I use are in the new one. If you already have a few different doctors you like/use, I would recommend contacting them and finding out what individual insurance they accept and then work backwards from there if there's one that all of them take. You can also look at each individual insurer's network, but that's a bit more hassle. I found that United Healthcare and Aetna had pretty coverage in my area, but that's Austin. Unfortunately, neither of them have PPOs (the only PPO in Austin is Scott & White, but their network is limited so it's sort of pointless). Cigna also has some decent HMO options in Austin, though they aren't on the exchange for whatever reason so you have to go directly to their website. Texas' unwillingness to implement ACA properly seems to be destroying the individual market here. Medicaid expansion would get so many people insured and reduce costs make these plans more viable, I would think.
My previous plan rates went up again this year so I applied for new health insurance and got a new PPO plan for about $200 less than my previous plan. The plan had a higher deductible than my previous plan but not vastly so. I used mnsure.org which is Minnesota's exchange to research plans and then applied directly through the company's website.
This has been at every single VA I've been to. The VA is a complete joke. This the future model of our medicine.
I really detest obamacare. I have to pay over 4g in premiums for the right to pay over 3g in deductibles before i can get anything more than a physical. Thats not affordble health care.
How is the VA a future model of medicine? Is there any evidence that we're moving towards government-run hospitals?
Is that an NYC thing? As sated my previous insurance went up but I'm saving with my latest plan. Everything else being equal I should save around $4K with my new plan. Things like physicals and preventive care are covered 100% under my new plan.
Did you get try to get individual insurance in NY before Obamacare? They were one of the most messed up markets in the country (because they banned pre-existing conditions but did not require insurance, which made no sense) - and it's the one where prices have dropped the most dramatically.
Also FYI Minnesota is one of the best performing states regarding health care. It had one of the least amount of uninsured even before ACA and was one of the early adopters to build an exchange. It hasn't all been rosy and there have been problems with the exchange but they don't seem as severe as other states.
Love it. The more the insurance billionaires screw with insurance in a temper tantrum over the ACA, the quicker we can get rid of the whole industry and move toward National Health or Medicare for All. Granted, right wingers and the uninformed (a lot of overlap here) would rather pay say $8,000 per year in premiums plus copays and drug expenses for healthcare than say $4000 in extra taxes without copays.
I've had a number of clients complaining about the same thing. At the same time I had clients complaining about the same thing before ACA, just now it is more complicated. I'm glad to be off the exchange and not dealing with the credits, as it can be a nightmare for the self-employed where income is far more variable.
We also have medicaid expansion and MinnesotaCare in addition to having one of the healthiest populations in the US. The Twin Cities themselves are second to DC in terms of health and health outcomes. Texas has one of the least healthy populations with no medicaid expansion (and certainly no equivalent to MinnesotaCare). Instead the state just pushed everyone onto the individual market which doesn't really work. Take an unhealthy state and do everything possible to sabotage the ACA and you get crappy rates with crappy plans. Every time I read a thread like this, I'm ok with living in the cold in exchange for better public policy.
So you are finally admitting the ACA is NOT an affordable care act and its a failure? I dont mind the idea of socialized medicine. I am unsure it can be done right. ACA is a complete disaster. The VA is a complete joke.
You cant start two wars and decide not to dramatically increase VA funding at the same time which is exactly what the US did. So now we have tens of thousands of veterans who need permanent or semi-permanent medical care and you just magically expect the current VA to work? That doesnt mean the VA sucks. That means we just chose not to fund it. In fact the VA got large cuts thanks to the sequester. Privatizing it wouldn't have made a difference and would have actually made it worse. The VA actually runs on much lower overhead than private insurance and hospitals and gets access to significantly cheaper rates on drugs and hospital equipment because they have bargaining power.
It tends to be more affordable in states that try to implement it well. It kind of sucks in states that have tried to make it suck.
Thanks, I did check on the Aetna site. They actually have you pick the plan before it takes you to the list of Providers, so that's honestly as much due diligence as I can do, prior to buying it. We'll see how it works.
I can tell you from my two days of looking, the provider lists are fluid. Many doctors listed as 'in the program' on the Blue Cross map show as 'not in the program' when you actually go to pick them and on Aetna, my wife's doctor's office told me yes they took the Aetna EPO but the company does not show they do. The doctors list on Aetna was massively better than BCBS. And it seems their PPO or EPO is not much more than BCBS HMO. I blame Blue Cross for the clusterfk though, they killed the PPO without having a real replacement ready to go. Sure they lost $440 million the first year (seems predictable that all the previously uninsured would come in for a backlog of medical issues) but they have $9 billion in the bank they could have used to stretch the time period another year until they had a HMO program built.
Honestly, Aetna's line of EPOs(Silver, Gold, etc) were the only ones with a credible provider list this year. I hate that given the list of programs to buy, when you start digging a little deeper, 90% of them are crap. No PPO to buy at all, mostly HMOs with small networks, and the EPOs are perilously close to bait and switch. I'm really hoping for the best with Aetna this year because I saw no other reasonable alternative plan.
