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not so much.

Medical insurance premiums in the United States are on the rise, the chief architect of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul has told The Daily Caller.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, who also devised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s statewide health care reforms, is backtracking on an analysis he provided the White House in support of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, informing officials in three states that the price of insurance premiums will dramatically increase under the reforms.

In an email to The Daily Caller, Gruber framed this new reality in terms of the same human self-interest that some conservatives had warned in 2010 would ultimately rule the marketplace.

“The market was so discriminatory,” Gruber told TheDC, “that only the healthy bought non-group insurance and the sick just stayed [uninsured].”

“It is true that even after tax credits some individuals are ‘losers,’” he conceded, “in that they pay more than before [Obama's] reform.”

Gruber, whom the Obama administration hired to provide an independent analysis of reforms, was widely criticized for failing to disclose the conflict of interest created by $392,600 in no-bid contracts the Department of Health and Human Services awarded him while he was advising the president’s policy advisers.

Gruber also received $566,310 during 2008 and 2009 from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a study on the Medicare Part D plan


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/11/obamacare-archit ect-expect-steep-increase-in-health-care-premiums/ #ixzz1m7El2rUN

yeah, and you can keep your plan if you like it too. oh yeah, there will also be no panels of unelected, unaccountable people deciding if you're financially worth a procedure or life saving process. i guess we're still finding out what's in this bill since it was passed. all is well.

and the insurance companies are not at fault right?
We need a single payer healthcare bill.

now someone on the left can post about how costs are rising because insurance companies are fleecing us before the regulations start.

then Blair can paste something.

then Bert can post a picture of a couple of black guys or maybe the tribal Obama care picture.

Interesting time for liberals to suddenly lose their natural cynicism towards vile insurance companies.

Any other time, their eeeeeeevil corporate profit detectors would be screaming about how there's no way insurance companies would be eating the cost of contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization treatments.

The Obama administration announced Friday that it's not backing away from the mandate that employers affiliated with religious institutions include contraception in their health insurance coverage. Instead, it's relying on magical thinking in the hope of making the political firestorm disappear.

The administration said it has come up with a win-win for employers affiliated with religious groups that object to contraception (such as Catholic universities and hospitals) and their female employees who want free access to birth control. It plans to revise its health insurance rules to exempt those employers from having to provide coverage for contraception. At the same time, however, it will require insurers to restore the dropped coverage at no cost to those employers' workers.

Sounds great, right? Churches won't have to subsidize contraception, and their workers won't have to pay for it! That's a considerable savings -- birth-control pills can cost $600 a year.

Except that the money has to come from somewhere. This is the point that advocates of contraception coverage routinely gloss over. The Affordable Care Act required insurers to cover preventive services with no out-of-pocket costs, on the theory that it would promote better public health and save money in the long run. It left a federal task force to decide what those services should be; the group later included contraception on the list. As a consequence, the cost of every preventive service will be buried in every policyholder's monthly insurance premiums. In other words, what appears to be free to the user is actually being paid for by everyone.

Here's where the magical thinking comes in. The following is from the fact sheet the White House released Friday:

Covering contraception saves money for insurance companies by keeping women healthy and preventing spending on other health services. For example, there was no increase in premiums when contraception was added to the Federal Employees Health Benefit System and required of non-religious employers in Hawaii. One study found that covering contraception lowered premiums by 10 percent or more.

Making everyone in a pool carry coverage whether they need it or not spreads the cost, saving money for those who really do need it and who'd choose to carry it if it were merely optional. But costs faced by the insurer are the same -- and when the care is provided with no out-of-pocket costs, the insurer's costs are likely to go up because more people will use it. Such is likely to be the case with contraception.

The administration's bet is that the cost of all those birth-control and morning-after pills, among other forms of contraception, will be more than offset by a reduction in other healthcare costs. A report by the Institutes of Medicine backs up the White House; it found that contraceptive use would save $19.3 billion a year -- far more than the estimated $5 billion annual cost of unintended pregnancies.

But whether this particular mandate produces that kind of result is something only time will tell. Although 28 states require insurers to cover contraception, the new federal rules are the first to require that contraceptives be available at no cost. The only certain result is that more women will get prescriptions filled for contraceptives. There will be a short-term cost to that, unquestionably; the administration's hope is that there will be long-term savings.

http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2012/02/the-w hite-house-wishes-away-the-cost-of-contraception-c overage.html

>>>>Interesting time for liberals to suddenly lose their natural cynicism towards vile insurance companies.



where are you getting that?

Jerry blames them in the second post.

lol

>>Covering contraception saves money for >>insurance companies

>>One study found that covering contraception lowered premiums by 10 percent or more.

^the study was done in Hawaii. The cleanest air in the world. The healthiest spot in the United states. IMO ..how about study in NYC? The problem with "studies" is there often bias.

yeah Hoover and you forgot this part:

We need a single payer healthcare bill.

no we don't. that "single payer" happens to be the portion of the population that pays federal income tax.

i went through the last year & half with no insurance but still received health care when needed by going through a faith based organization. i still paid my bills, they were heavily discounted by going through the org. everyone got $$$ out of it. the doctors & nurses volunteer, emergency room works with them to lower my cost. Ex: $5K for e-room visit knocked down to $2200.

even the other service providers (radiology, e-room physicians, etc) that did not work with the organization had a discount program for people that didn't have insurance. all one had to to do is talk with the billing dept.

50% - 75% off was normal. and no, there was no mention of any religion in the faith based org. there was a single page of information in the pkg they give you when you sign up w/them.

So a person without health insurance that gets cancer only has to go to a faith based organization and all will be well. They will get a discounted cost that they can afford?

>>portion of the population that pays federal income tax

^lol. that's pretty good.

>>>only has to go to a faith based organization.

^Just be sure to call ahead.

>>>So a person without health insurance that gets cancer only has to go to a faith based organization and all will be well.

what makes you think the outcome would be any different if they had insurance? my dad had insurance & died in the hospital 3 weeks after he was diagnosed. no insurance company, hospital, or faith based organization could have done anything.

http://www.medicaid.gov/

Hillman, that may be true for your Dad but many cases of cancer are curable. My Dad has had cancer on two different occasions. He is currently in the hospital recovering from a stroke. How would he be able to get his care?

Let me get this straight . . . ... We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, Which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we'll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke!!!!! 'What the hell could possibly go wrong?'

the exact same way. they don't discriminate based on what medical condition one may have. it's the exact same level of care & service as anyone with a health insurance plan. they reduce the amount of what you pay, just like an insurance company. without the premiums.

What would you do if your medical costs ended up being in the hundreds of thousands?

Pay cash.

Fundraisers

Faith based charities

Medicaid



What is the value to the taxpayer in paying an old mans medical bills?

The insurance companies are getting their licks in before 2014. One of the many flaws in the health care bill was waiting so long to let it kick in. This gives the insurance companies free rein to fuck us as much as they can for the next two years.

Don't worry about new doctors Bert. No medical schools are closing down.

As for cancer, my sister nearly died last fall from a clotting disorder that had gone undetected her entire life until her operation for cancer. Thanks to the dedicated doctors and staff of Duke University Medical Center, she's still with us. And will be for years to come. She was lucky to catch it early and to have good people working on her when she had a crisis.

i would imagine the same thing an insured patient would do. except i believe (don't know with certitude) w/faith based orgs you'd stand a better shot at getting the costs dismissed or drastically reduced. just my opinion, i don't really know. i don't know what happens with the insured when charges reach that level. and it doesn't take long to get to that point, either.

i think we all really want the same thing, we just have major disagreements on how to get it.

great point bert.

who the hell is our surgeon general? i know i can google, but i usually know this stuff & i have no idea who it is.

blue, did your sister have insurance, and if so, how did the medical bills go? i'm not privy to how universities like Duke do their thing. but i did volunteer for clinical trials when i was at Wake Forest.

pretty much, Hillman. We all want affordable healthcare.

>>We all want affordable healthcare

^That's not true. There are plenty of people going to the ER room today with no intention of paying. Then again, if its free, well its affordable. right ?

>>>There are plenty of people going to the ER room today with no intention of paying.

i know you're right wiz (plenty of people in my neck o'the woods do that), but that concept is so foreign to me. i can't comprehend the "no intent whatsoever to pay even a penny towards the care they received" thought process. it just doesn't seem.............................................. ............................................right

^^there's always to sides to the arguement. Some People don't get paid enough to afford it. If I was a worker from Mexico. I don't know if I would care weather it was right or wrong. I just be happy its free for me and my famlia. y tios and ticas

By mr Benson (Bert) on Saturday, February 11, 2012 - 07:05 pm: Edit Post
>Let me get this straight . . . ... We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, Which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor<

Jeez Bert, why don't you just acknowledge in your post that you plagiarized this from Donald Trump? Really not that hard to do...

adding a single new doctor

^^One thing is for sure the US will need more Doctors. The schools will be open yes, but I see a shortfall or lowering of standards in the near future.

>>>y tios and ticas


“What is unseen is their [illegal aliens’] free medical care that has degraded and closed some of America’s finest emergency medical facilities, and caused hospital bankruptcies: 84 California hospitals are closing their doors.”

-Madeleine Peiner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq. “Illegal Aliens and American Medicine,” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

I have no idea how any of what I have to say will fit into anyone else's thoughts or arguments.

The premiums for my work-affiliated health insurance went up 51% for 2011. They went up 1% for 2012. I pay approximately 20%.

My husband is on SS Disability Insurance. He has Medicare, a medicare supplement and a Medicare drug insurance, all of which he pays for. The drugs to reduce (not cure) his cancer cost $7500 per month, with an additional $14,000 infusion every 8 weeks. $29,000 total every two months to help keep him alive. He worked toward his SSDI, and he pays for all of his insurances. Nothing is free.

In our area people without health insurance do not get reductions in charges from hospitals and providers. The hospitals and providers are contracted to write-off a portion (sometimes large) of their charges if the patient is insured. If the patient is not insured, the hospitals and providers don't write-off any of the charges and the patient often pay much more than an insurance company does for the same services. It's a system that sucks.

FUCK CANCER!

Thanks, Judit. I just found this...looks like the premium increases after "Obamacare" are pretty much just a continuation of the premium increases before "Obamacare."

I had a student brag in class the other day that he went to the emergency room for health care and didn't pay for it. Then he said he was against public health care. I started to explain the hypocrisy of his position, but I didn't have to. Sometimes I love my students--even the ones who do things like steal health care. I did tell him he was welcome.

>>cancer cost $7500 per month, with an additional $14,000 infusion every 8 weeks. $29,000 total every two months

^Damn that is expensive, your husband is a fighter. Best wishes for succesful slow down of the cancer.

>>>continuation of the premium increases before "Obamacare."

but we were promised obamacare would reverse that trend:

The Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President in March 2010, gives you better health security by putting in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that hold insurance companies accountable, lower health care costs, guarantee more choice, and enhance the quality of care for all Americans.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/healthcare- overview

That comes in 2014 when health insurance companies will be forced to spend 80% of what they bring in on actual healthcare (not employee bonuses or advertising).

Exactly. When those regulations and reforms are put into place, we'll see what happens. Right now, the rates appear to be unaffected by "Obamacare." They're just doing what they've been doing for years.

More spin by chance. No surprise



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Dems retreat on health care cost pitch
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Steny Hoyer gestures during a Health Care Thank You rally on Capitol Hill in Washington. | AP Photo Close
By BEN SMITH | 8/19/10 4:55 PM EDT Updated: 8/20/10 3:31 PM EDT

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the deficit and instead stressing a promise to "improve it."

The messaging shift was circulated this afternoon on a conference call and PowerPoint presentation organized by FamiliesUSA — one of the central groups in the push for the initial legislation. The call was led by a staffer for the Herndon Alliance, which includes leading labor groups and other health care allies. It was based on polling from three top Democratic pollsters, John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg

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The confidential presentation, available in full here and provided to POLITICO by a source on the call, suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public and to defend the legislation — in particular, the individual mandate — from a push for repeal.

The presentation concedes that groups typically supportive of Democratic causes — people under 40, non-college-educated women and Hispanic voters — have not been won over by the plan. Indeed, it stresses repeatedly, many are unaware that the legislation has passed, an astonishing shortcoming in the White House's all-out communications effort.

"Straightforward ‘policy’ defenses fail to [move] voters’ opinions about the law," says one slide. "Women in particular are concerned that health care law will mean less provider availability — scarcity an issue."

The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House's first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.

"Many don’t believe health care reform will help the economy," says one slide.

The presentation's final page of "Don'ts" counsels against claiming "the law will reduce costs and [the] deficit."

The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.

"People can be moved from initial skepticism and support for repeal of the law to favorable feelings and resisting repeal," it says. "Use personal stories — coupled with clear, simple descriptions of how the law benefits people at the individual level — to convey critical benefits of reform."

The presentation also counsels against the kind of grand claims of change that accompanied the legislation's passage.

"Keep claims small and credible; don’t overpromise or ‘spin’ what the law delivers," it says, suggesting supporters say, "The law is not perfect, but it does good things and helps many people. Now we’ll work to improve it.”

The Herndon Alliance, which presented the research, is a low-profile group that  coordinated liberal messaging in favor of the public option in health care. Its "partners" include health care legislation's heavyweight supporters: AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, Health Care for America Now, MoveOn and La Raza, among many others.

Today's presentation cites three private research projects by top Democratic pollsters: eight focus groups by Lake, Anzalone's 1,000-person national survey and an online survey of 2,000 people by Greenberg's firm.

"If we are to preserve the gains made by the law and build on this foundation, the American public must understand what the law means for them," says Herndon's website. "We must overcome fear and mistrust, and we must once again use our collective voice to connect with the public on the values we share as Americans."

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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41271.ht ml

No, I didn't forget the password.

Romney wins CPAC straw poll

Obama gambles on costly initiatives

Romney wins 2012 Maine caucuses

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>What is the value to the taxpayer in paying an old mans medical bills?

Living in a civilized society?

the taxpayer someday will be an old man.

If he wasn't smart enough to hire a concierge doctor, like on that television show about the Hamptons, then fuck him.

>> looks like the premium increases after "Obamacare" are pretty much just a continuation of the premium increases before "Obamacare."

I don't think you proved that at all.

The "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" passed in December of 2009. Your graph only shows the numbers up to 2009, the rest is projections.

Do you have any real numbers showing what happened AFTER the bill passed?

Ah...fair enough. Let me see what I can find...it does make the point, though, that the increase of premiums is not a new thing. It's not like they were holding steady and, bam! The Affordable Care Act made them go up.

But it's a fair point, Ender.

Here's what I found.

By Julie Appleby

KHN Staff Writer

Sep 27, 2011


Employers' spending on health coverage for workers spiked abruptly this year, with the average cost of a family plan rising by 9 percent, triple the growth seen in 2010.

Family plan premiums hit $15,073 on average, while coverage for single employees grew 8 percent to $5,429, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust. (KHN is an editorially-independent program of the foundation.)

Workers paid an average of $921 toward the premium of single coverage and $4,129 for family plans.

The results mark a sharp departure from 2010, when the same survey found average family premiums up only 3 percent.

Although many benefit analysts say the federal health law’s requirements played only a small part in the rise, the results could provide political fodder for both supporters and opponents of the law.

"It's problematic," says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, because the No. 1 concern cited about the health law is a fear that it will increase costs. Still, Lake notes that many Americans don't know much about the law, so the news of rising premiums "could also fuel support for provisions in the law that require insurance premiums of 10 percent or more to be reviewed."

Premium increases have played a starring role throughout the debate over the health care law.

Before the law's passage in 2010, for example, insurer WellPoint's effort to raise rates by as much as 39 percent for some of its California customers drew sharp rebukes from the Obama administration and helped build support for the law in Congress.

Proponents of the law also point to this spring's decision by Aetna to lower premiums for individual policies in Connecticut as an effect of the health law. Responding to the report, the White House weighed in with a blog post from Nancy-Ann DeParle, the assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff. She said provisions of the law are already beginning to slow premiums, pointing to another report released today by the Office of Personnel Management saying average premiums for the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program will increase by 3.8 percent next year. Premiums increased 7.3 percent this year.

But opponents say the law adds costly new mandates – and has not shown results yet.

"Despite the president's repeated promises that the Democrats health care law would lower the cost of health insurance, employers are still facing higher health costs," said Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Wally Herger, R-Calif., in a written statement Friday.

Many factors drive premium growth, the main one being actual spending on medical care, including jumps in prices charged by hospitals and doctors and growing use of expensive new drugs and technologies. State regulators have widely varying authority over premium increases for policies sold to individuals and small businesses. Currently, 26 states and the District of Columbia have the authority to veto rates deemed excessive for at least some types of health insurance. Additionally, seven states have the power to review rate increases in advance but not to block them.

Over the past decade, premiums have risen steadily, with double-digit increases seen from 2000-2004, the Kaiser survey and other tracking reports show. Growth in premiums moderated starting in 2006, averaging about 5 percent for several years, the survey found.

The benefits firm Mercer reported earlier this year that per-worker health spending by employers rose at about 6 percent annually for about the past five years, rising to nearly 7 percent last year. Projecting future increases is harder, as many surveys estimate based on initial negotiations between insurers and employers, before changes to benefits are made to slow premium costs. In a study out last week, Mercer projected that employers may see their health spending rise 5.4 percent next year, while a similar survey released in May by accounting firm PwC estimated an 8.5 percent rise next year.

Insurers often set rates well before they go into effect, using data to estimate coming expenses, including how much policyholders are expected to use medical services. Analysts have noted a slowdown in doctor office visits, births and elective surgeries they say is related to the economy.

One factor in this year's increases was that "employers and insurers expected a faster economic recovery and geared premiums to higher levels of utilization," says Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Foundation.

The growth of premiums far outpaced the growth in workers' wages – as it has for the past decade. Wages grew by 2 percent this year.

Long, I know, but relevant.


http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2011/septe mber/27/employer-health-coverage-survey-shows-empl oyer-spending-spike.aspx

We switched our company insurance from Aetna to United Healthcare and my insurance costs went down 40% at the start of 2012 for the same level of coverage.