After looking at this thread:
http://www.debatepolitics.com/off-topic-discussion/175028-sense-does-make.html I decided to check to see what a 25 year old male smoker in Illinois would pay for the same Health Insurance coverage I had when I was a self-employed 25 year old smoker back in 2002 and the difference is quite interesting.
I had a $2,500 deductible, $5,000 max out of pocket with 80% coinsurance back then ($25 copay) and I paid about $300 a month for it.
Comparatively, a 25 year old male smoker in Illinois can now get a plan with a $1,500 deductible, $3,500 max out of pocket with 80% coinsurance ($10 copay) for about $240 per month.
Not too shabby. That's without adjusting for inflation, too.
If we adjust for inflation, my coverage then was the equivalent of a plan with a $3,250 deductible, $6,500 out of pocket with a $30 copay today and it cost me $390 per month (this website:
CPI Inflation Calculator was used for inflation calculations).
What's interesting is that there is a plan available today that would only cost $230 per month that has $3250 as the max out of pocket cost
and deductible which has a 100% coinsurance.
So it looks like I would have saved a lot of money on health insurance if Obamacare existed in 2002. I found this interesting.
The Massachusetts plan had much the same effect on the individual market. The problem was , this was achieved by combing that sector with the small business group, which shot their premiums through the roof, causing many in the state to still wrestle with premiums that were shooting up 20% per year at one point. I'm not sure if the mechanism is the same with the ACA, but if it is, your savings were basically achieved by forcing small business to heavily subsidize your plan. Not what I would necessarily consider a success, given the heavy pressures that sector is already under
Health Reform Lessons from Massachusetts, Part VII : Columbia Journalism Review
that entire series is really worth the read, and the same can be said about Trudy's coverage on healthcare, in general
PS also, it's worth keeping in mind that the economy has had a depressing effect on healthcare and insurance costs in general. But that pressure isn't something that is likely to exist for the long term. Nor is a slackening of prices, due to people not being able to afford care, necessarily a good thing, to begin with
<<<One of the Massachusetts law’s objectives was insurance market reform, which would merge two formerly separate types of policy markets—the individual market, where people bought policies on their own, and the small group market, where small businesses bought policies for their workers. The idea was to expand the so-called risk pool, bringing insurers a better mix of sick and healthy people who would in turn make premiums more affordable and coverage more attractive—at least for individuals. More attractive individual coverage, a.k.a. lower-priced policies, would help insurers enlarge their market share. “Blue Cross wanted the merged market so they could increase their market,” one business executive told me. “They were the major driver behind combining the small group and individual markets, which was a huge cost shift onto small employers.”
It was yet another example of the balloon problem in American health care—fix one problem and another pops up somewhere else. Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, told me: “Despite all this new business insurers and hospitals get, they keep billing us double digit increases.” Rates had been high even before reform, but Hurst added: “You would have thought rates would come down, but they haven’t. We have poured billions into the health care industry in this state and they haven’t given us any return.” Businesses with more than ten full-time workers must offer coverage, or they may be assessed $295 per year per employee.
At the beginning of the year, Hurst said, his trade association—which employs five workers and represents about 3000 small businesses across the state—got hit with a sixteen percent rate increase from Blue Cross Blue Shield. That meant that Hurst’s group now pays $18,000 per year for family coverage. That was a relative bargain. Other small business owners, Hurst said, were paying $23,000 and $24,000 for similar policies.
To prevent steep premium increases, association employees’ copayments rose from $5 to $25, amounts that are pretty typical. Other small businesses are also making workers bear the increased costs one way or another. The next option, Hurst explained, is the $1000 deductible. There’s a feeling, he explained, that insurers have stacked the deck and are pushing toward a $1000 deductible for small businesses, because that is where they can make more profit. Hurst was frustrated the day I interviewed him.>>>