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My husband's company who has been paying 100% of employee's medical insurance, now may be penalized for having insurance too good! What a mess!

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Sounds like the so-called Cadillac tax, which starts in 2018, which taxes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees.

You have been very lucky that your husband's company has been paying 100% of your medical insurance [I assume that means the company paid your monthly premium, paid the deductible, and paid all the co-pays].... decades ago many Fortune 500 companies offered that to employees but throughout the years slowly the employees started to pay some of the premiums, had small deductibles and may or may not have had co-pays. Those great benefits have disappeared over the past couple of decades. I'm surprised there are still companies still offers such benefits. Be thankful you have had this type of insurance for whatever amount of time you had.

I'm jealous. Back when I was self-employed, my monthly premium was $550 per month, the deductible was $2,500.00 and my co-pays were $20 for every time I walked through a doctor's door, and that was just for me alone. That was a decade ago, can't imagine what the cost would be in the past few years. Wish we had the Affordable Care Act back then, those of us who were self-employed would have had more affordable health insurance.
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I too just recently got insurance through Obamacare. Premiums for me and my husband, self employed at our own small business, were $1000 per MONTH, with a $5000 deductible for him and a $7500 deductible for me - meaning if we were in an accident together, we would have to pay out $12,500 before insurance would pay a dime. That's after paying a grand a month. And of course after the deductible, we still had to pay all the copays, etc. We weren't really insuring our health - we were insuring that we didn't lose our house. If you have Cadillac insurance, well, good for you, but before you bash Obamacare, put yourself in my place, or in the place of someone with a serious illness who couldn't get insurance at any price. I'm finally getting some doctor attention. Obamacare has been virtually a lifesaver for me - and yes, I pay for my premiums.
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Freqflyer... thanks for the info His company has treated their employees very well.
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I work for NYC; I probably have what is considered Cadilac insurance and will have to pay more for it in the future...but the fact that my 31 year old daughter, college graduate, in graduate school working babysitting/daycare jobs was able to get some decent health insurance to care for her bad back and depression is worth anything that I have to pay. Add in the fact that I don't have to worry any longer about what might happen if she got hit by a bus, had a serious infectious illness, etc. I think Obamacare is a good if not great fix. It needs tweaking no doubt. But it's a start.
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I think it's sad an employer is treating his employees with utmost concern for their health and wellbeing and then gets penalized!
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I don't believe that the employer gets penalized for having insurance that's "too good". that's a much too simplistic way of looking at what is going on.
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the insurance industry is a bloated , parasitic mess and its a matter of time theyll be thrown out of the fray and we'll go single payer / socialistic style medicine. obama got medical records and communities digitized and online in only his first 3 years of office just like he proposed. all eyes are on the elephant in the room right now ( insurers ) and im loving it.
get a JOB baggy pants..
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And the elephant does not have to live by it's own rules.
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My "Obamacare" is Humana. Now, that's a joke. Insurance companies rule the US.
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gsw what was it before? how has it changed?
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My mother died in 1962 and left behind medical bills of $10,000. My dad had to put the house up for sale. When I first got health insurance in 1972, it was only catastrophic coverage, not day to day stuff. It became effective after you paid $1000 out of pocket. The next step up was insurance that only kicked in when you were hospitalized. I don't have Cadillac insurance, I have to pay $100 a month deducted from my pension, I am 62. I am eternally grateful that Obamacare made it possible for my daughter to get good coverage after her husband walked out and left her with a lapse in coverage. She pays about 1/4 of her SSDI check to keep it. On the other hand we are living too long, lives unnaturally extended by drugs. Good grief my grandparents barely made 70. Today they would make 90, but at a huge cost. People aren't allowed to die anymore. But the way we keep them alive is inhumane, strapped to beds and loaded with pills. Something has to change.
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I am sooo grateful that my self-employed artist daughter can finally afford decent health insurance. She recently had a medical problem attended to that she had suffered with for a long time.

My self-employed handy-man son is also a candidate for new health insurance. Hooray!

When I was self-employed I was paying $800 a month for insurance. I had a good gig. What struggling artist or handyman can afford that?

Our approach to healthcare is gradually shifting from "you can have only what you can afford" to "access to good healthcare is a basic human right." During this transition some who by luck of working for certain employers may get less lucky. (I don't know that, but I guess it is possible.) I am sorry about that. But that is greatly outweighed by how glad I am for people who can finally have access to our excellent but expensive healthcare system.

Is the affordable care act the end-all be-all height of perfection? Absolutely not! Is it a great step in the right direction? Oh, I don't doubt that at all.
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I get the part of accrued medical bills, and younger people who won't have pensions later on. Gosh I was out of my childhood home at age 18. My big concern is after all the premiums/deductibles get raised even more than they are now, how are any of us little people going to be able to pay? It seems similar now that people have to give up homes to pay for care ex:medicaid etc. Especially when there are terminal disease involved and require many different treatments, doctors, medicines, testing and copays? It is very unsettling.
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norestforweary, have you experienced higher rates? I think that is what the original poster is asking for -- examples.

Insurance rates have steadily risen for decades, unrelated to Obamacare. In 1999 the "average family" (whoever that is) spent 11% of its income on health insurance. in 2010 that statistic was 19%. Yikes! I know that employers have struggled with how to continue to offer the same benefits to employees in the face of rising premiums. (This was before Obamacare.)

There is one aspect of the affordable care act that will probably impact premiums. Insurance companies can no longer exclude certain higher-cost people from the pool. If they have to cover people with preexisting conditions, for example, that will probably mean bigger payouts. Bigger payouts mean bigger premiums. If you don't have any conditions, this may seem unfair. If you were diagnosed with diabetes at age 17, this will seem totally just.

My first employer after college (a very large corporation) provided life insurance as a benefit -- but only for men. I kid you not. When laws changed and society said they could no longer do that, they had a choice of offering smaller life insurance amounts to everyone, offering life insurance to no one, or extending the same benefits to everyone and paying the difference out of profits. (Ha ha on that last option.) Some of the men really hated that new law! They had a nice big policy before and now they were going to have to pay something toward the policy if they wanted to keep the same amount. No fair! Terrible public policy! Somehow as a democracy we survived that upheaval and many younger people think I am making it up when I tell that experience.

If you are among those for whom insurance costs are going up, norestforweary, I am sorry for you. I have friends whose costs have gone up and deductibles have gone up nearly every year for the last decade. I was sorry for them, too.

That doesn't change my belief that allowing people with preexisting conditions to obtain insurance is a good thing.
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My inital question was has anyone had a bad experience with Obama care. We are trying to gauge what we might be facing in the future as our own medical decisions need to be made. We have many friends, neighbors and family who's insurance companies dropped insurance for the whole company, have raised deductables to 10,000 copays to 40.00 -50.00 and premiums have risen from 24-38 %. The insurance for ALL these people is worse than it was. Maybe people in different locations are being hit harder, I don't know.
I am happy for all the self employed people who now can afford health care who could not before. But it does come as a cost to others.
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Obamacare is not an insurance plan provided by the Government. It provides a network for people to find medical insurance for their needs. Individuals select the plan that will work for them through insurance companies.

If a company changes its plans, that is a company decision to lessen their overhead. Our insurance plan where I work has changed every year for the 22 years that I have worked here, it is nothing new.

Those individuals that lost their plans had insurance plans that did not meet the new requirements. Those plans would drop you in a heartbeat if you discovered you had cancer.

The Obamacare Plan merely tightened up insurance coverage making sure everyone who wanted insurance could obtain insurance--even those with pre-existing conditions.
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Many of my friends have lost their insurance due to Obamacare. Through the ACA (if they could even sign up) they are paying higher premiums for less coverage, some coverage they don't need or want, and their deductible is so high, they might has well not even have the insurance. Plus now the medical flexible spending accounts have been abolished because of ACA which means everything they pay out of pocket is after tax money. Some deal huh?
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Obama care is going to cripple this country and our elderly are going to be treated like they don't matter, I have already seen it with my own parents. That is bad enough but the worst part of this whole plan is if its really a good plan why is it that the President, Congress and other bodies of Government don't have to be covered under it, why do they get specialized better insurance. No one will ever convince me that ObamaCare is a good thing and as you become more familar with it and try to get your elderly loved one care the they deserve and can't get you will be as angry as I am and your feeling about this plan will change. We need to take care of our elderly and ObamaCare does not do that.
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All Congressional members had to switch to Obamacare.
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I need to ask our friend in Congress about that.... thanks for the info. I thought it was the staffers who had to switch.
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I have a friend with a horrific medical history who previously had care through a high risk pool. She chooses not to be employed by a company with benefiits and contracts instead....likely the better choice for her, as her medical condition tends to flare up occasionally. Also, she is a fighter, so she rather not consider apply for Disability until she absolutely has to. Obamacare is a great thing for her, no doubt and I am pleased my taxes support that siutation.

However, my dislike and fear of Obamacare is (a) all the "tough love" part of the bill is not effective until Obama is out of office....suspicious
(b) I believe by squeezing the insurance companies and the doctors the quality of health care will decrease for all.

All the celebrities pushing this are rich and can afford concierge doctors....personal pay for premium services, including house calls. Do you think Alonzo Mourning waits in his nephralogists waiting room? I distrust celebrity endorsements.

I think Health Care will follow the path of the Public School systems - highly accessible, mostly mediocre with small pockets of excellence. That is what government run institutions deliver. And before all the retired teachers blog-kill me, it is fair to say the American educational system is broken, look at the international comparisons. Indian and Asian students beat us out in score applying for American Universities. I had a first rate private education, my parents blue collar, middle class, made this a priority. I attended State University and worked though a good portion of my Bachelors and all my Masters. I was driven. My High School peers that had high grades mostly studied Law, Medicine, or Business. Only one brilliant girl became a teacher, all the others that studied education were C students..... so I fear as we make medicine a less desirable career it will only attract the C students, and I was really hoping my future cardiologist would have been a member of the National Honor Society.

I had a friend (50) retire young and return to his homeland, England. We spoke about medical expenses and he said, anyone who can afford it has private insurance because it can take 6 months to see a doctor and those are not the best doctors.

So, I do not bash it, but I do not drink the kool-aid. I wait and see, I believe we may be in for a rude awakening. In the meantime I make funding my own retirement a priority, such that I have options.
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I'm thrilled with the ACA. I am paying less $300 a month less for similar coverage with a lower deductible than I was paying before. AND I don't have to worry about being dumped if I get some kind of medical problem. I'm self-employed and before the ACA, I wouldn't go to the doctor for different things because I didn't want it on my record for future insurance company reference. Because they could have denied me coverage. I LOVE the ACA.
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I am glad to read above that some people actually know what the ACA is all about and have correct information.

Those who dislike the ACA usually don't like change, who does. And part of that group are running on misinformation regarding this program.

This website has all the correct information, including a section regarding debunked myths. http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform
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Z
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freqflyer, really -going to whitehouse website for all the correct information. Is this the transparent whitehouse?
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Lots of mis- informed answers on both sides here. The only good result from the ACA is that sick and uninsured can now get coverage. So why not just have a law or program for that...instead of a huge revamp that is and will cost taxpayers Billions and Billions and ruin our excellent health care system. It is a fact that people in England and Canada that can afford it buy insurance on top of paying health care tax because the government system is slow; overburdened and inefficient. So that is where the U.S. is heading. Insurance is not all bad and gov't provision is not all good.
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Needing coverage for my wife, we looked into obamacare before we had all of our income data for last year. Family of 5 but we only need insurance for her as I have the VA and the kids were all adopted from the state and have coverage until 18. At that point the premiums plus deductible just for coverage for her, was going to equal 56% of our annual income, and no subsidy, before we would receive a penny in benefits.
Then after receiving all of our income paperwork for the year, an additional $9k, we then with the additional income qualified for the subsidy. That changed the plans to a more affordable premium and deductible. However, currently we receive over $1000 in meds from Rx companies patient assistance programs. If we sign up for obamacare then the co-pays for Dr and meds will cost us right at 50% of our monthly income. We can't afford the affordable insurance touted. Another thing we found, on all of the plans offered the Dr co pay was listed on the obamacare site as $5 per Dr visit. When you clicked and went to the actual insurance co site and looked at each plan individually, every single one of them stated Dr co pay was actually $75 per visit.
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Wow! This is the first forum I've seen where people were happy about Obamacare. In my case, my parents were dropped from my dad's company's retiree policy and had to find Medicare suplement insurance. Since they both have dementia, I took care of this for them. The new insurance costs them 50% more per month than before. Then my husband's former employer dropped retirees, and, once again, I went insurance shopping and we will have more expensive premiums and higher deductibles, all on a fixed income. I know a lot of young people (under 35) who are being forced to buy insurance even though they don't want it, and they are shocked at how high their premiums and deductibles are. My son's girlfriend will be paying $2,500 in premiums with a $2,500 out of pocket requirement before the insurance pays much of anything. My 55 year old sister will have to pay $600 per month in premiums ($7,200 per year) with a $5,000 deductible. So that's $12,200 for something she doesn't want in the first place. She only goes to the doctor once a year and it usually costs her $150. I realize a car accident or other emergency could cost her a lot more in the long run, but she doesn't have the money to shell out $7,200 for premiums, so she's just going to pay the penalty and take her chances.

So good for you all of the posters who love Obamacare, but it is an actuarial mess and we would all have beenbetter off in the long run if they had just expanded Medicaid to cover more people.
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It seems as though there are winners and losers with the ACA as far as premiums, deductibles and coverage availability. My personal experience is that we lost our group coverage (my husband is a self-employed physician who had coverage through a physician's group), found private insurance with slightly lower premiums, but with a sharply higher deductible. Our total potential out of pocket annual cost is over $24,000.

I have a different perspective on the effects of the ACA. My husband has a solo practice, and greatly dislikes large group "assembly line" medicine. With only three employees, his patients talk to the same people, who answer the phone and know who they are, each time they call, and they never need to navigate a phone menu. The waiting room has six chairs and they are rarely used for more than 10 minutes at a time. We looked at the idea of concierge medicine a few years ago when it was considered new, and we realized that it was the type of care that he had been providing for over 20 years, with no extra fee. Unfortunately, the ACA will force him into early retirement. This year we were required to spend several thousand dollars to purchase a new computer and software to be able to bill insurance charges under the new billing codes which go into effect later this year. Our billing person went to training sessions to learn about the new billing procedures. We decided to spend the money for this change even though, as all self-employed people know, it comes directly out of our pocket. The final straw will be the requirement for electronic medical records. Our small office would need to spend over $100,000 for the software, training and conversion to EMR. At 62, we are not going to do that. Although my husband would have been perfectly happy to continue practicing for several more years, and still gets requests from potential new patients, his small practice just cannot absorb that cost. These new requirements will sharply increase operating costs for physicians, and I believe that in the future, nearly all doctors will be employed by hospitals, and individual practices will disappear. In my opinion, this is exactly the opposite of the "medical home" model that was supposed to be the goal a couple of years ago. I am concerned that this will limit access to care, especially in rural areas.
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I am an insurance agent who has been helping people enroll. Almost without exception, I have been able to help people get insurance who hadn't had any or had insurance they struggled to afford. My son has a congenital condition that is not in any way disabling but I couldn't find ins for him. When I finally did, it was a $5000 deductible, then a 50/50 split. The premium was about 1/4 of his monthly income, about the same as his rent. With the ACA, his premium is $25 mo, $350 ded and $10 office visits. It truly is affordable care for him and he can afford to get the follow up brain MRI he's been putting off as he couldn't afford it with his old insurance.

I've had people come in ranting & raving about being forced to get ins and the Gov but by the time they are done with the process and have health insurance, at a cost they can afford, they are singing a different tune. If you have had exceptional health ins at work, good for you. Many people have been stuck in jobs they hate or needed to quit for other reasons but have been unable to because they needed the insurance. Complaining that your insurance was too good is like complaining you won the lottery and now have to pay taxes.
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