Thoughts all ye young folks, I'm too close to 40 to be called young anymore?

http://www.philly.com/philly/busines...ng_adults.html

<h1>Health premiums could rise 17 % for young adults</h1>
By Carla K. Johnson

Associated Press

Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans - a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect.

Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That's when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for the Associated Press. The analysis did not factor in tax credits to help offset the increase.

The higher costs will pinch many people in their 20s and early 30s who are struggling to start or advance their careers with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.

Consider 24-year-old Nils Higdon. The self-employed percussionist and part-time teacher in Chicago pays $140 each month for health insurance. But he's healthy and so far hasn't needed it.

The law relies on Higdon and other young adults to shoulder more of the financial load in new health insurance risk pools. So under the new system, Higdon could expect to pay $300 to $500 a year more. Depending on his income, he might also qualify for tax credits.

At issue is the insurance industry's practice of charging more for older customers, who are the costliest to insure. The new law restricts how much insurers can raise premium costs based on age alone.

Insurers typically charge six or seven times as much to older customers as to younger ones in states with no restrictions. The new law limits the ratio to 3-1, meaning a 50-year-old could be charged only three times as much as a 20-year-old.

The rest will be shouldered by young people in the form of higher premiums.

Higdon wonders how his peers, already scrambling to start careers during a recession, will react to paying more so older people can get cheaper coverage.

"I suppose it all depends on how much more people in my situation, who are already struggling for coverage, are expected to pay," Higdon says. He'd prefer a single-payer health care system and calls age-based premiums part of the "broken morality" of for-profit health care.

To be sure, there are benefits that balance some of the downsides for young people:

In roughly six months, many young adults up to age 26 should be eligible for coverage under their parents' insurance - if their parents have insurance that provides dependent coverage.

Tax credits will be available for individuals making up to four times the federal poverty level, $43,320 for a single person. The credits will vary based on income and premiums costs.

Low-income singles without children will be covered for the first time by Medicaid, which some estimate will insure nine million more young adults.

But on average, people younger than 35 who are buying their own insurance on the individual market would pay $42 a month more, according to an analysis by Rand Health, a research division of the nonpartisan Rand Corp.

The analysis, conducted for AP, examined the effect of the law's limits on age-based pricing, not other ways the legislation might affect premiums, said Elizabeth McGlynn of Rand Health.

Jim O'Connor, an actuary with the independent consulting firm Milliman Inc., came up with similar estimates of 10 to 30 percent increases for young males, averaging about 15 percent.

"Young males will be hit the hardest," O'Connor says, because they have lower health care costs than young females and older people who go to doctors more often and use more medical services.

Predicting exactly how much any individual's insurance premium would rise or fall is impossible, experts say, because so much is changing at once. But it is possible to isolate the effect of the law's limits on age-based pricing.

Some groups predict even higher increases in premiums for younger individuals - as much as 50 percent, says Landon Gibbs of ShoutAmerica, a Tennessee-based nonprofit aimed at mobilizing young people on health care issues, particularly rising costs.

But wait, I thought rates were going down?

Obama said rates would go down and now they're going up? Wasn't "rates will go down" one of the major selling points of this bill?

Didnt Obama say that medical/insurance cost were bankrupting young adults and this bill was made to fix this problem?

Supporters please explain because us non-supporters have been saying from the get-go that Obama's logic would do nothing but make rates go up. All we heard from supporters was "no, no, no they wont. You heard that on fox news." And I love this one from Obama: "If you do not support this legislation then you do not support health care reform" With all due respect, fuck you sir!

So now my personal rates are going up to go along with this massive increase my business is going to absorb. Fanfuckingtastic.

 

Originally Posted by mordan

Whaaaaaaaaaa, stop the press, holy shit, you mean inflation is real, and that prices in 2014 are going to be higher!?!?!

I have a feeling that they are not speaking about inflation rates in 4 years. It is pretty easy for them to adjust the estimates into real dollars and not inflation based dollars. Would the estimates be perfect, no, but what estimates are perfect.

It is just pointing out that the young and healthy, although guaranteed health care will also be paying to flip the bill for the sick. Its an obvious concept, but, understanding the net effect of the legislation on young people should not be understated. At my first job, I paid $40 a paycheck for health care in 1995 and my Salary was $26,500/year. Even with inflation, that $40 does not somehow become $200 without having an effect on the income of the young.

I'm thinking pharmaceuticals is the place to go find work.

or perhaps

Joining Union management.

Great futures in those positions under the current administration.

I could send you our book of business for the past 5 years and you would see the trend. If you are implying that i am making this up, why would I? I was posting to help the original poster out. We work mainly with group plans and the medical premiums from BCBS have increased just as much as any other carrier. When I started 3 years ago, family medical premiums were around $1,000-$1,400 per month. Now we are seeing the same medical plans cost closer to $2,000 per month.

So, the question is, what is driving up the costs so much?

Is that people are getting that much sicker? Or is it perhaps the cost of all those law suits? I'm just trying to wrap my head around why the plan I paid $40 for in 1995 is now worth at least $200 (which is for worse coverage actually, and the true cost of reproducing my plan from 1995 would be closer to $500 a month for ONE person today).

So, what was it that drove up the costs so much over that 15 years?

New innovation costs that much? I though new innovation drove down costs, perhaps I am wrong.

So, what really is making health care so expensive?

 

Originally Posted by skisteve

I'm sure libs will sell that as doing our part lol. Eventually they will be bithing and moaning how expensive life suddenly is when the novelty wears off and being broke settles in. Some people have to suffer in the real world before they get a clue that money doesn't grow on trees because you want it to. this is what seperates liberals and everyone else imo, lack of being able to see these unsustainable progressions as the obv result of their 'genius'. Ahhhh just a few more years of this.

I lold.

well, then answer me the following that I posted above...

 

Originally Posted by jesterwoods

So, the question is, what is driving up the costs so much?

Is that people are getting that much sicker? Or is it perhaps the cost of all those law suits? I'm just trying to wrap my head around why the plan I paid $40 for in 1995 is now worth at least $200 (which is for worse coverage actually, and the true cost of reproducing my plan from 1995 would be closer to $500 a month for ONE person today).

So, what was it that drove up the costs so much over that 15 years?

New innovation costs that much? I though new innovation drove down costs, perhaps I am wrong.

So, what really is making health care so expensive?

 

Originally Posted by jesterwords

So, the question is, what is driving up the costs so much?

Is that people are getting that much sicker? Or is it perhaps the cost of all those law suits? I'm just trying to wrap my head around why the plan I paid $40 for in 1995 is now worth at least $200 (which is for worse coverage actually, and the true cost of reproducing my plan from 1995 would be closer to $500 a month for ONE person today).

So, what was it that drove up the costs so much over that 15 years?

New innovation costs that much? I though new innovation drove down costs, perhaps I am wrong.

So, what really is making health care so expensive?

My company I used to own went up 20% a year for our plan for 5 years on average. It drove me insane. At that time (up until 2000) it certainly wasn't about advances it was them saying costs to them increased and were being passed along from drug makers etc. I seriously don't buy that because medicine costs were not rising 20% a year tracking along with it then.
I'm no expert but I wonder if it's just simply because they are publicly traded companies forced to always make more profits for the shareholders and nothing more. (not advocating the govt runs it either, completely the opposite. They suck at running anything.)
Obv developing blockbuster drugs keeps getting more expensive too and you need profits to develop them to stay ahead of the generic curve later but it's a vicious over exaggerated cycle.
what I don't get is why big pharma doesn't see way back to then how unsustainable a 20% increase a year is. Is privatizing them a partial answer to eliminate shareholder pressure? I don't know. It's just another bubble like housing nobody chooses to see until it's too late. (I saw that bubble early on too.)
I've never been against reform, just obamas kind. I just don't like the way they decided to try to fix it in government without addressing the root problem. And without reading it all, as usual. just saying reform for reforms sake doesn't make it the right reform. It always ends up politicizing it all and fucking it up, predictibly. also, not having across state line competition is still retarded imo.

 

Originally Posted by LuckyWilbury

You do know that 2007 is more than a year ago and that graph accurately describes what he said, right?

Lol yeah I saw that too. Way to make his case for him right? I think he is bickering he was off by 1% each direction perhaps? Obv all he saw was a downward curve without still seeing the numbers on the side.

I was just using the graph to show that there was 5 years of decrease in growth rates. Now all of a sudden rates have ballooned up to 25%? I mean seriously? Nothing like the American public just ignoring the numbers and saying "meh... that's just the way things are".

 

Originally Posted by Realbigfish4

I was just using the graph to show that there was 5 years of decrease in growth rates. Now all of a sudden rates have ballooned up to 25%? I mean seriously? Nothing like the American public just ignoring the numbers and saying "meh... that's just the way things are".

If you have insurance then you should see the same graph. Our coverage over the last 5 years has incrementally gone down in terms of coverage and up in terms of costs on our end.

 

Originally Posted by HK_MP5N

If you have insurance then you should see the same graph. Our coverage over the last 5 years has incrementally gone down in terms of coverage and up in terms of costs on our end.

I don't need insurance. Your tax dollars already take care of me. Well as of now they do. Thanks to this amazing bill vets like myself that are fully covered through the VA might have to shell out money for insurance now as well.

 

Originally Posted by jesterwords

Explain to me again now, why the $40 I paid in 1995 for my health care benefits should go up so much if I have never been sick, do not go to the hospital, and went over 10 years between even checkups.

Since you are only 1 person, you mean nothing to an insurance company that insures millions. You are put in a pool of millions of other individuals that have health insurance and the insurance carriers charge based on how that pool does. When it comes to group plans (Employer Paid), each group's claims are not used to define their renewal increases until the group is over 100 employees. The definition of insurance is a law of numbers. Take money from a lot to pay out a little. Since there are over 100 people to cover in these companies, they can take a lot of premium and possibly have 5 sick employees that they have to pay out.

If you get sick, it could cost the insurance company $100,000 (obv. depending on the sickness). If you are paying $200 a month, they will have lost a lot of money on you, the individual. If they take $200 a month from 1,000,000 people and you get sick for $100,000, they aren't hurt as bad.

I am doubt that liberals could ever support any type of Darwinist thought because natural selection would just say let the sick be taken.

Think back when we were cavemen, the tribe was worried about Gimpy AL Roker, GAR in this case, when the fucking triceratops was running after them for lunch?

Naw, even though they liked GAR, and he had a great personality and all, the fact that he gets eaten and they don't means that the strongest survived. Now, we no longer have to run from predators like they had back then, no, now we have diseases that wipe people out... but they had them then as well.

We just waste shit tons of money preserving lives for short periods of time. You would say to me, that is cruel. Then I am cruel. I can live with that accusation, because on lots of levels, Darwinist thought is cruel, it is cruel to let the weakest die, but necessary for the strongest to survive... in that thought model.

(note for n00bs - I am taking a side and arguing for it, it may or may not reflect my true feelings... ex - I am not a true Darwinist, but it makes for a fun argument.)