Not sure it can really be considered a real repeal. Afaik, it’s just talking about removing the penalty for the individual mandate.
But removing the individual mandate will break the exchanges in the long haul. Of course, I suspect the blue states would just put in a patch so the only states would really crap the bed would be the red states.
ObamaCare signups surge in early days to set new record - The Hill
I know we signed up already, which is much earlier than last year.
Overall, since my wife doesn’t work anymore so she can take care of the baby, our combined income is very small, so we only have to pay about half the premiums for the plan we selected. A little over $200 a month for the two of us, overall $2700 for 2018, and if something happens and we have to go to the hospital/doctor for something, co-pay and deductible combined means we’ll pay $4600 out of pocket for the incident. So, not too bad.
I’m confused on why we got so much help on the premiums still. I thought they ended the cost-sharing subsidies and that was what helped us out on the premiums? I guess that was something else?
And my 6 month old is still covered by Missouri Healthnet (covers newborn children), which I think gets its funding from the CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program that congress didn’t fund this year, right? So I wonder if that will problem when its time to renew that next year?
The thing they were talking about ending was money that the government pays to the insurance companies to help them lower costs.
The premium subsidies to actual consumers is separately paid by the government.
I believe that the people who are ultimately screwed by removing the subsidies to the insurance companies, are people who make too much money to get any of the subsidies. The result of not paying the insurance companies, is that they will raise premiums. For lower income people, the effect is nil, because the law limits their total costs. The effect is just that the government will end up having to pay more to subsidize them. But if you don’t receive subsidies, then you will just have to pay the increased premium costs.
Ah, thanks for clearing that up for me Timex.
Any thoughts on CHIP? Is there political pressure to renew that, or is it just gone? I thought that passed through a bipartisan effort and wasn’t controversial?
I think that there must be pressure to renew CHIP, but given what a dumpster fire the Trump admin is, on literally a daily basis, it fell off the table of the American consciousness.
I’m really struggling to find an acceptable plan this year. The company we were with pulled out of the area. There are no exchange PPOs left (and even the one we had pretty much had stopped being a ppo in many ways). I’ve found something that will let us keep the doctors we want, though it will be several hundred dollars more than last year. I could go with Kaiser and pay less than last year, but none of their facilities are near us.
The biggest issue is that my son is in school out-of-state, has no insurance available through the school (largely a commuter school), and finding a plan that will cover him is a major problem.
Thinking of trying to find a broker to help, but I already know that a number of major carriers have stopped selling their off exchange offerings as of the new year
Trump and the GOP wants this to fail. They couldn’t pass anything to replace it and couldn’t kill it outright so they want to starve the process.
Is there any reason why your son can’t get his own plan locally?
I imagine he could, I was trying to avoid him having to deal with it. Plus, he will be home part of the time.
Young college student and not in your state, it might be worth him giving it a try. Maybe he can get an PPO plan that also works out of state for a better price than you can find for all of you. I don’t remember how they have it set-up now but I thought it was possible to kind of shop around without too much effort.
I send a new letter to my representative about CHIP every couple of weeks.
Most colleges have some kind of cheap on site health care. It can handle the small stuff.
My daughter is using Covered California’s absolute cheapest plan for insurance. Something like $40 a month. Not the best if you need a doctor but at least she has something.
The House did pass something to reauthorize CHIP, but only tied to some ACA and Medicare restrictions.
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20171103/NEWS/171109951
Yeah, I was asking my representative to work on a bill for CHIP that wasn’t tied to other horseshit, but I guess she told me to go to hell.
This exactly. I am in the same state as Rock8man. I am not eligible for any subsidies. My individual plan went from $670/ month this year to $1,000+ next year.
I hate the GOP.
A Victory Lap for Obamacare at the Ballot Box - The Atlantic
Seems unlikely to me that they’ll be able to win a fight that boils down to “religious freedom” vs “gender discrimination”. But I hope I’m wrong.
Here we go…