Wendell Potter: Insurers’ High-Deductible Plans Leave Many Without Needed Care
http://wendellpotter.com/2015/05/insurers-high-deductible-plans-leave-many-without-needed-ccre/Those executives came to embrace as the newest silver bullet a strategy incubated at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based libertarian think tank that advocates for fewer government regulations and more individual responsibility. The strategy that emerged in the early 2000s was what the insurance industry called consumer driven health plans CDHPs for short. These plans are superficially appealing because the premiums are lower. But that obscures a defining and central feature of CDHPs: a requirement that folks enrolled in them, regardless of income, pay a substantial sum from their wallets for medical care every year before their insurance coverage kicks in.
In some ways at least, CDHPs are about less insurance. With every passing year, under the industrys strategy, insurance companies would be paying a smaller percentage of medical claims while their customers would be paying more because of the high deductibles.
Fast forward to 2015 and the effects of that strategy are playing out but not to the benefit of consumers. Instead, ever-increasing numbers of Americans are finding themselves in the ranks of the underinsured.
The latest evidence came last Thursday in a study released by the left-of-center Families USA. Using data collected by the Urban Institutes Health Reform Monitoring Survey, the group found that more than one of every four adults enrolled in these CDHPs went without needed care because they didnt have the cash to pay for it.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I'm so happy with my ObamaCare.
I had to change this year to Blue Shield from Blue Cross but without ACA I'd still be with a $1350/month Anthem plan.
Now, prices are set by age, sex, and zip code and you can change when you want to if you don't like your plan.
I have a Silver 70 PPO, and I'm only out $6350 last year for three surgeries and one million dollars in care (brain surgery with complications).
There will be another $6350 this year (max out of pocket including deductible) for the fourth surgery to fill the void in my skull, and I'll get a colonoscopy and parotidectomy to boot, since I'm at my max.
$12,700 for over $1,000,000 in services, not bad!
Thanks, Obama!
drm604
(16,230 posts)It should be illegal to do this unless they provide an HRA to cover the deductible.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)300 person operation. Since I am seven years from Medicare, I'm out 56,000 bucks. Thanks, Obama!
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)Check the stock prices for insurance, pharmaceuticals since heritage care was enacted. That specifically shows money given to the companies that they don't return in services.
This was the biggest transfer of money from working people to billionaires in history, and precludes us from getting healthcare for at least fifty years. And it was the plan from the beginning.
progressoid
(50,020 posts)And my wife.