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Not So Affordable Care Act – New York Edition
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Empire Fed) issued a Supplemental Survey Report conducted as part of their monthly manufacturing survey detailing how firms in the region are responding the Affordable Care Act.
Before reading further anyone care to wager the results of the survey?
Asked whether they were changing their health plans in response to the ACA, roughly two in five respondents—in both the manufacturing and service sector surveys—said they were not. Of those that were, however, the most widely reported adjustments involved higher deductibles, increased co-pays, and higher out-of-pocket maximums. The vast majority of firms in both surveys indicated that they would be paying a higher total premium, and somewhat more than half of respondents in both the manufacturing and service sector surveys said they were raising their employees’ share of contribution to the premium.
Considering this is from the Federal Reserve in the back yard of the major party nominees one would think this kind of data would either be paraded or buried depending on one’s consideration of the ACA. Time will tell if it makes it the mainstream media outside of CNBC.
Published in General
Can you imagine the cost of home insurance if it covered repairs on your dishwasher? Periodic house painting?
Or the cost of car insurance if it paid to replace your tires every few years?
I don’t watch any medical shows but I know that’s a comedy so I’ll take whatever he is then.
Indeed. We ran an experiment this year at work: We kept our high deductible plan as the base, but then offered 2 richer (i.e. lower out of pocket) plans. We pay 100% of the premium for the base plan, employees are on the hook for the delta between that and the “better plans”.
What everyone figured out was this: By paying the higher premiums for the traditional plans, employees would still be spending more than in a worst case scenario on the base plan. You save money by sticking with the base plan, funneling cash into the HSA, and paying your bills out of that. Worst Case: you’re out $6500 in OOP expenses. You buy that richer plan and you are paying an additional $4k-5k per year, AND you still have a $3k OOP.
But at least that way employees could see how much insurance is costing us and stop demanding “better” plans.
You’d like him.
I like this.
This shows why we need to eliminate the tax deduction for insurance premiums for employers and switch it over to individuals. If people really understood how much premiums cost (not their contribution, but the entire price), suddenly those high deductibles wouldn’t seem so high anymore.
I find it ridiculous that with all of the debates over health care reform on both sides of the aisle, this one simple change doesn’t have any support. It would barely change the underlying economics of our current system, but it would change the incentive structure immensely.
He’s my angry spirit animal.
You’re dreaming. We’re too used to having pre-paid health care.
This is an example of the left controlling the language. “Health” covers so many things. Can we at least say “medical ” care?
I’ll strive to do so in the future.
It made the front page of Ricochet. That’s a start.
Kudos to @mendel for #35.
I couldn’t care less (any more) what companies pay for tax-deductible health insurance, what the copay is for employees (full-time or part-time), or what the deductible or out of pocket expense is for any of these things. I am entirely self-involved because:
I retired six years ago.
Since that time, I’ve adjusted my expectations with respect to co-pay and out of pocket expenses downwards, (or upwards, as the case may be) three times in order to keep my premiums affordable.
I pay the full amount of my premium, every month, myself.
It goes up, substantially, every year, in spite of the fact that I reduce my coverage benefit, every year or two, substantially. And that won’t change until I become eligible for Medicare (HAHAHAHAHA!) three years from now.
My annual payment, which for an individual plan is in the several thousands of dollars, is not tax deductible, and, by being a responsible consumer of healthcare, there is absolutely NO WAY that I can get my health care expenses to the point that any portion of them would be tax deductible in any given year, absent a catastrophic illness.
When, I ask for the umpteenth time, is the tax break coming for individual health care plan expenses?
Or, if it’s not deductible for me, when will it not be deductible for employers, and when will the monthly co-pay not quality as a ‘pre-tax’ deduction, as it currently does for many, many businesses?
Just asking.
My company, today, offers two medical plans for all its US employees. High-deductible and higher-deductible. They have a HSA plan. They contribute nothing to an employee’s HSA, only the employee contributes. The higher-deductible involves no employee monthly contribution, the high-deductible one does. The company used to have a “wellness” plan where you did activities and earned points to get your premium lowered. They cancelled that at the end of last year (probably because the company running it wanted to increase their price). I expect soon we will hear about how much more the employee premiums will be for 2017, and perhaps both plans will require employee participation in premiums. This is not available to the company’s European employees, who have “government-mandated” health care plans.
I am not in my company’s plan-I’m on hubby’s (really rich, Union) plan.
Of course, the government might help by taking the truly crazy step of allowing people or businesses to buy insurance across state lines,but that may be too radical for our public masters.
We’re seriously considering Liberty Healthshare because it is more affordable than any insurance we can find, and because the deductible (which they call the “Annual Unshared Amount”) is far lower than anything out there. It is nationwide, so you don’t have to switch your policy if you move, and there no networks. I think they also offer plans for small businesses, @skipsul.
Family plan paying 100% of bills of up to $1,000,000 per incident, with an annual deductible of $1,500 per family = $449/month.
Does anyone know more about them?
https://www.libertyhealthshare.org
Another outstanding resource:
http://selfpaypatient.com
It won’t. Consumers (voters) have been the proverbial boiled frog. The Democrats either are activists who want single payer or opportunists who are willing to trade off misery. The GOP presidential nominee admires single payer, and the GOP Congress has such weak leadership that they haven’t been able to coalesce around a single alternative in six years (more, if you consider that the basic outline of the GOP plan was proposed in 2004 by GWB). Large employers are finally understanding the new system and adapting to it, so the last thing they want is another change. Small employers… well, they never had clout anyway, but the more they go out of business the less clout they have.
Tea Party voters cared passionately. Other voters didn’t care. The Obama administration and the GOP establishment kneecapped the Tea Party. SCOTUS gave complete power to Obama. At this point, it’s rational for voters to shrug and try to just muddle along as best they can.
I hope this is incorrect in the long run, but have no data or evidence to refute it.
Wow, that is really incred…WHOA, TRUMP JUST SAID SOMETHING OUTRAGEOUS!!
If we’re going to be apportioning blame, a great deal also has to fall on Republican voters.
A great portion of the Republican electorate is at or near Medicare age, and they nearly-universally don’t want cuts to Medicare. But since Medicare is an overly-generous single-payer system, it’s highly unlikely that the rest of the taxpaying electorate is going to accept the pain of a more marketed-oriented healthcare system (i.e. higher out-of-pocket costs) for themselves while millions whose earning years are finished are receiving first-dollar payment for expensive treatment at their expense.
Add to this the fact that nobody’s proposed a decent plan for patients with chronic/pre-existing conditions, and there really isn’t enough support from the Republican base to encourage lawmakers to stick their necks out on what may well be a suicide mission.
Agreed. However, please note that I was careful with my choice of words. I placed the bulk of the blame not on GOP lawmakers, but specifically on their weak leadership. Good Congressional leadership makes the tough calls to settle on one policy, one plan, one set of talking points. It then bargains or strongarms as necessary to whip a majority. There have been a number of workable approaches proposed by the membership, but the GOP leadership has been unable or unwilling to get out in front and lead, putting their energy and clout behind an actual plan/law.
Continuing that thought: Why should voters support the idea of reform when the loyal opposition isn’t pushing an actual reform? With no one making a solid argument for the benefits of a specific reform, it’s understandable that voters would be apathetic or skeptical.
And it doesn’t matter how bad it is. If people are used to [insert fecal matter euphemism] long enough, then eventually they end up thinking [repeat euphemism] is good for them and don’t you dare try to take it away! (See: VA hospitals). Politicians know this. They know time is on their side when it comes to creating huge entitlement mandates, no matter how painful the implementation is or how bad the service sucks. Eventually, people grow to love it. If the GOP had learned this lesson, they wouldn’t lose so much. Implement your agenda, without apology, and let people get used to it.
An out-of-pocket colonoscopy. That would be the hip pocket, right?