I want to extend my thanks to the wonderful folks at Blue Cross Blue Shield on Hendersonville Highway who helped me through Healthcare.gov this past Tuesday and got me signed up for a plan that will be almost $350 less than the plan I’ve been struggling to pay for the past several years.
Not only is this a great savings, but the plan is far superior to my present plan with better co-pays and a $2,000 out-of-pocket limit compared to a $6,500 one. I’ve heard so many negative comments about the Affordable Care Act. I think it’s time for people to hear something positive. I would not have been able to afford my present plan with its ridiculous $3,500 deductible any longer, and I know there are a lot of other people in my shoes. Thank you, Obama!
— Carolyn B. Pidgeon
Asheville
What this really means is that now, young health conscious people are subsidizing your health insurance premiums. That is great for you and unfortunate for the young people faced with soaring healthcare premiums and deductibles.
“Insurance is the pooling of risk.”
Yet before ACA, insurers were allowed to exclude people with pre-existing conditions, set lifetime caps that were so low, or deductibles that were so high, that they could hardly be called “insurance” at all. Do you not consider those things, which the ACA tries to address, as massive distortions in the “pooling of risk”?
Pre-existing conditions was an issue that needed to be addressed, preferably within the existing system we had. Deductibles for most comprehensive plans have not been historically high. If anything, compared to the Obamacare scheme, they are low. Deductibles tend to be high for speciality coverage ie. catastrophic coverage (which would be a preferable coverage for most young, healthy people).
However, your sniping did not address anything I stated in my comment. Are you content to have healthy young people subsidize premiums for older, less healthy people?
Given that Obamacare, as flawed as it is, was the best thing that they could navigate through the legislative process (and the Obama haters), I am content that it is better than what we had before. I believe that we’ll see within a decade that the only real solution is single payer, and we’ll get there eventually. Once we get there, yes – healthy people subsidizing unhealthy people IS how “pooling of risk” is supposed to work.
That is not how pooling of risk works. Pooling of risk is the paying of premiums into a common pool by people of similar or adjusted risks. Risk is adjusted by increasing or decreasing individual premiums. Healthy people who lower risks pay lower premiums. This is why risk pools offer premium discounts for non-smokers, people who are within a particular weight ranges and other health correlated factors. That “similar risk” factor has now been thrown out the window so that now,, Asheville’s young people must pay higher premiums with greater deductibles in order to support higher risk individuals.
There was no navigating. Obamacare was forced upon us by a purely partisan vote with zero consensus and zero opposition input. It was passed via bill reconciliation because Harry Reid knew there were not the votes to get it any other way.
So, no, you are wrong.
Good to know I have a fan club here.