pacino wrote:you shouldnt want to keep that shitty plan anyway, but if you did, you weren't going to get to keep it even without this law:

Q: How do the policies work?

A: About 15 million people buy health-insurance policies on the individual market. That’s about 5 percent of the population. When they do so, they typically purchase a 12-month contract. And when that contract runs out, the individual can decide to no longer purchase the plan — and the insurance company can decide to no longer offer the plan.

Most people don’t stay in the individual market long: One study, published in the journal Health Affairs, found that 17 percent of individual market subscribers purchased the same plan for two straight years or longer.

There are some restrictions on how insurance companies can terminate products. HIPAA, a health law passed in the 1990s, does require insurance companies offer subscribers the opportunity to renew their policy, so long as they continue to pay monthly premiums. If they want to discontinue a subscriber’s policy, the insurance plan must provide notice of 90 days and “the option to purchase any other individual health-insurance coverage currently being offered by the issuer for individuals in that market.”

And these are the notices that insurance plans are sending out now, to hundreds of thousands of subscribers: notices saying that they do not plan to offer the policy anymore, and information about what policies will be available.

Q: So why is this happening right now?

A: Some — or maybe even most — of the plans offered on the individual insurance market right now don’t meet certain requirements in the health-care law. They may not offer preventive care without co-payment, for example, or leave out coverage of maternity care, one of the health-care law’s 10 essential benefits.

The health law allowed plans that existed in March 2010, when it became a law, to keep selling coverage. These are known as “grandfathered plans.” They don’t meet the health law’s requirements, but as long as they don’t change much, insurers can keep offering them.

Insurance companies typically do like to change their insurance plans, adjusting cost-sharing or the benefits they offer. That means that grandfathered plans have disappeared.

These cancellations are, essentially, a lot of grandfathered plans exiting the insurance marketplace. From an insurance company’s vantage point, grandfathered plans are a bit of a dead end: They can’t enroll new subscribers and are really constrained in their ability to tweak the benefit package or cost-sharing structure. There’s not a whole lot of business sense, for a managed-care company, in maintaining a health plan that doesn’t meet the health law’s new requirements.

Q: How many people are getting cancellation notices?

A: It’s hard to put an exact number on this, given that insurance plans are the ones that decide whether to continue offering an insurance product. Experts have estimated that somewhere between half and three-quarters of those who currently buy their own policies will not have the option to renew coverage, which works out to around 7 million to 12 million people.
Q: How did this happen?

A: There are lots of insurance policies, especially on the individual market, that are really bare bones. Some argue they shouldn’t even be called insurance coverage, because their coverage is too sparse to insure against financial ruin. One report from the Obama administration, issued in 2011, found that 62 percent of individual market plans don’t offer maternity care. Eighteen percent do not cover mental-health benefits and 9 percent do not pay for prescription drugs.

The health-care law requires insurance plans to cover all of those things, and then some.

This includes spending at least 80 percent of subscriber premiums on medical care (leaving 20 percent for administration and profits), covering 10 benefit categories and providing preventive care without any co-payment.

Q: Will insurance cost more?

A: This will vary a lot from person to person. Some people who are buying a bare-bones plan right now will likely see higher premiums under the Affordable Care Act. They’ll be getting more benefits — but paying more in premiums.

Some people will get financial help buying that more robust insurance; people who earn less than 400 percent of the federal poverty line (about $45,000 for an individual) can use a tax subsidy to purchase their plan.

pacino wrote:the first few paragraphs where it states people don't stay in these plans very long, either by their choice or by the choice of the company.

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:the first few paragraphs where it states people don't stay in these plans very long, either by their choice or by the choice of the company.

The thing about the English language is that's not what "you weren't going to get to keep it" means

jamiethekiller wrote:our healthcare plans change what seems yearly and we have to sign up for a new plan

jerseyhoya wrote:But plenty of the plans weren't shitty, and in many cases people are now paying much more for similar coverage.

Not offering preventative care without co-payment or maternity coverage are both pretty high on the list of things I wouldn't give a shit about if I was purchasing health care.

Government knows best though, look how good of a job they're doing so far.

jerseyhoya wrote:Obamacare Jacks Up Her Insurance

snip

This article is my everything. Gonna be devastated if I find out she's a plant from the insurance industry.

Let’s start with Jake Tapper’s subject, Sue, who used to have a $254 premium, and a $3500 deductible, and who makes too much money to qualify for subsidies. What if I told you that Sue could get a plan with a much lower deductible, say, zero dollars? And what if I told you that she could pay a zero dollar copay for office visits, prescriptions, inpatient and outpatient hospital care? And what if I told you this plan was from the same insurance company that Sue had before? Now how much would you pay? If a $6000 deductible is worth $647 /mo., then this thing must be, like, a million dollars a month. How does $228.66 /mo. grab you?

I know what you’re thinking, that plan makes you get referrals, and who has time for that noise? In that case, you can get a $293 /mo. plan that does have a $6000 deductible, but which doesn’t apply that deductible to its $30 office visits and prescription drug copays, or for a little bit more, you can get the zero dollar deductible, zero dollar copays without referrals, at $309.78 /mo.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:But plenty of the plans weren't shitty, and in many cases people are now paying much more for similar coverage.

many cases? Much more? Prove it

You can't & neither can I, and it's because the current state of health insurance regulation works pretty well as a textbook case of regulatory capture.

EDIT: consider that you can find the price history, trading volume, and oodles more information on practically any securities transaction on your damn cellphone without asking anyone's permission or going through hoops to get years-old crap, but you can't get jack or squatworth of information on health insurance pricing. It ain't because data doesn't exist.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote: Not offering preventative care without co-payment or maternity coverage are both pretty high on the list of things I wouldn't give a shit about if I was purchasing health care.

this objection to maternity coverage thing is something that makes my head explode. It's a litmus test for whether a person has given any genuine thought to the conceptual issues and functional challenges underlying insurance. But don't feel bad; most people fail.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Government knows best though, look how good of a job they're doing so far.

You ARE aware that mandates like maternity coverage were implemented at the state level a generation or more ago, even in the most toothless & benighted of red states?

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:And the vast majority of people would have been able to keep their plans without the law. How the hell are you getting "you weren't going to get to keep it even without this law" from that article?

Maybe not "get to keep it even without this law" - but "you weren't going to keep it even without this law", because based on your own "research" most people move on from individual coverage, and/or get severe rate escalation or outright cancellation notices within 36 months of purchase that caused them to drop coverage long before anyone ever imagined something like ACA

td11 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Obamacare Jacks Up Her Insurance

snip

This article is my everything. Gonna be devastated if I find out she's a plant from the insurance industry.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnns-jake-ta ... ker-shock/

Let’s start with Jake Tapper’s subject, Sue, who used to have a $254 premium, and a $3500 deductible, and who makes too much money to qualify for subsidies. What if I told you that Sue could get a plan with a much lower deductible, say, zero dollars? And what if I told you that she could pay a zero dollar copay for office visits, prescriptions, inpatient and outpatient hospital care? And what if I told you this plan was from the same insurance company that Sue had before? Now how much would you pay? If a $6000 deductible is worth $647 /mo., then this thing must be, like, a million dollars a month. How does $228.66 /mo. grab you?

I know what you’re thinking, that plan makes you get referrals, and who has time for that noise? In that case, you can get a $293 /mo. plan that does have a $6000 deductible, but which doesn’t apply that deductible to its $30 office visits and prescription drug copays, or for a little bit more, you can get the zero dollar deductible, zero dollar copays without referrals, at $309.78 /mo.

jerseyhoya wrote:Maybe only the few dozen people who are being negatively affected by price shock are sharing their stories and the rest of the 7-12 million who are changing plans all had terrible ones and are now getting super cheap, super awesome plans. I dunno. I think 'many cases' and 'much more' are probably accurate and sufficiently vague given the uncertainty.

jerseyhoya wrote:I'm not really sure what you were going for down here due to the quoting mess, but my "research" consisted of reading the article pacino posted in this thread and suggesting he misinterpreted what it said, given my expert knowledge of what the phrase 'get to keep' means.

jerseyhoya wrote:Plenty of not shitty policies are being canceled for people as well. You can keep brushing them away as shitty if you want, but it doesn't make it true.