It is that time of year again. It’s open enrollment at my employer for health insurance options. I have the cheapest family coverage option – Keystone HMO. We go through all the red tape of primary care physicians, referrals, co-pays and deductibles. I consider myself lucky because my employer picks up about 80% of the total premium cost. They are the largest employer in Philadelphia, so they have major leverage in pricing negotiations with the health insurance companies. Despite this leverage, my premiums will be going up by 9.2% in the coming year. This is after a 12.1% increase last year. And this is just the premium side. Two years ago we had no individual or family deductibles. Now they are over $1,000. Therefore, my true annual cost is up by 20% per year.
Obamacare was passed in 2009. It immediately forced employers to cover kids up to the age of 26. Ever since my premiums have gone up by double digits every year, my co-pay went from $15 to $35, and they introduced deductibles. Obama sold Obamacare as reducing the average family insurance premiums by $2,500 per year. I guess I’m not from an average family.
Now the good part. The CPI is supposed to reflect the inflation rate of a dozens of living expenses. It weights Medical Care as only 7.7% of the total of your expenses. Hysterically, it weights Health Insurance as .753% of your total expenses. The ridiculousness of these weightings is astounding. A household with median income of $52,000 has medical care expenses accounting for at least 15% of their total expenses. Health insurance premiums alone are easily 8% or more. Even with my employer picking up 80% of the premiums, my portion is about 4% of my total expenses and my medical care expenses surpass 10% of my total expenses. The government is purposely under-weighting these expenses to falsify the inflation figures.
It gets even better. Your government keepers have the balls to tell you that health insurance costs actually FELL by 0.4% in the last 12 months, while medical care expenses only rose by 2.5%. The data from the beginning of 2010 (when Obamacare became law) to now is breathtaking in its falsity. According to the BLS here is the rate of inflation for these categories since January 2010:
Health Insurance – 12.6% (2.3% annual increase)
Medical Care – 15.9% (2.9% annual increase)
Do you think Humana, United Health, and Cigna are reaping massive profits with 2.3% annual premium increases? This data is an outright joke. My health insurance premiums are up by over 65% since 2010. My medical care expenses are up over 75% since 2010. I guess the government is comfortable with lying to the American people because they know they are apathetic, math challenged and distracted by their iGadgets.
What is your health insurance inflation?
Same here… modestly higher premiums but bigger jump in deductible, copays and increase in max out of pocket. They are also heavily steering people into the high-deductible HSA-based plan and away from the traditional plan(s). Turn your head and cough!
My employer paid premium is up 70% over 2010.
My out of pocket is up: everything I spend with exception to co-pays at the office, those just doubled. What used to cost me $30 now costs $180.
Every “gain” in “wages” shown by the Bureau of Lies and Shams is directly related to Obama and Pelosi gifting increases in federal wages and benefits (while the rest of us took pay cuts, hour cuts and lost our jobs) and health insurance for the remaining employer paid.
If you were to back out those truths, you would see our ACTUAL household wages are falling. Hard and fast.
Get the hell away from this system. That is the only way to save yourself, and even that is temporary as eventually I am going to be forced to comply. With the majority’s consent and demands.
Loving democracy in the age of the industrially brain damaged is near impossible.
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Americans’ tax burden is already $3 billion heavier because of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare.
By putting more able-bodied, working-age childless adults on Medicaid than Kasich projected, Obamacare expansion is reducing incentives to work and threatening traditional Medicaid recipients’ access to care faster and at greater cost than anticipated.
After Kasich expanded Medicaid unilaterally, a state panel approved $2.56 billion in Obamacare spending for the expansion’s first 18 months. The money was meant to last until July, but it ran out in February.
Kasich’s Obamacare expansion cost $323 million in March — 84 percent greater than estimates revised just six months earlier.
Using monthly figures released by the Ohio Department of Medicaid, the Republican governor’s Obamacare expansion cost slightly more than $3 billion from January 2014 through March 2015.
Kasich’s Obamacare expansion is on track to cost more than $4 billion by the end of June.
With federal taxpayers on the hook for all benefit costs and Ohio facing a growing state share in 2017, Obamacare expansion may soon consume 10 percent of Ohio’s budget.
My health insurance inflation is 0% because I never bought any.
The health care plan we wanted to keep was canceled because of government mandates, but we are told, (by media) that this was the greedy insurance companies fault.
Our new plans deductible went up an average of $2,000, the average employees cost went up $200 per month a few were more, one guy was over $400 per month more.
There was no way the company could afford that cost without raising our charge out rates so we had to pass that added cost onto the employee, they all quit the plan, so my wife and I are also looking as we no longer have a group plan with only two people.
I’ve been on the individual market since 2010 because I own a business and stopped having enough employees to qualify for group coverage in 2010. My individual market coverage has changed in limits and deductibles almost every year, so it’s very hard to say exactly what my inflation has been. As far as I can tell, however, it was around 10% /year until 1/1/2014, when I was no longer able to continue a pre-Obamacare plan, and jumped 40% by switching to a super high deductible Obamacare-compliant plan. From 2014 to 2015 it would have gone up another 10% but I switched to an even higher deductible (basically catastrophic only) plan for 2015 because of that.
Health insurance premiums are by far my 2nd largest expense after the mortgage, and if I was on a reasonable deductible plan they would cost MORE than my mortgage. Obamacare has absolutely fucked me.
As a ex-pat exiled in Not- so- Great Britain, we still have the NHS, here although it’s being sold off/ privatised fast & furiously to ” foreign investors.” It is not long for this world.
Those of us working folks are, of course taxed heavily for this behemoth. And like most government- run organisations the NHS is largely mismanaged and underfunded, plundered, etc . As much as I dislike socialism, and have several issues with this crumbling, wayward system, the current option in the U.S. appears even worse than this . . .
oops, I meant to type “an ex- Pat”
Mine has not gone up one cent. I quit playing the game and now put my families, pre obamacare insurance premium, into a dedicated account. We never use the doc except for check ups etc. It is growing into a nice sum and obamacare can suck it.
Quit the game,pay yourself, not the insurance company.
Stephanie Shepard says: My health insurance inflation is 0% because I never bought any.
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Steph, you know you have a tax penalty if you make more than $9,500, right?
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-report-pay-the-new-health-insurance-penalty.html
The exact amount of the tax penalty is based on household income above the level at which an uninsured individual is required to file a tax return–currently $9,500 per person and $19,000 per couple. This penalty is scheduled to be phased in over the next several years as follows:
for 2014, the penalty is the greater of $95 or 1% of income
for 2015, the greater of $325 or 2% of income
for 2016, the greater of $695 or 2.5% of income, and
the $695 amount is indexed for inflation after 2016.
@Rise Up: first, I’m not sure SS makes enough to hit that penalty, but even if she does, $95 buys you maybe a week of high-deductible coverage, if that – not a full year. Even $695 won’t cover a month for a family, or two months for a single 20-something. And IIRC you can avoid the penalty by not having any refund they can take it out of.
All of Obamascare is a clusterfuck at this point.
Persnickety says: @Rise Up: first, I’m not sure SS makes enough to hit that penalty, but even if she does, $95 buys you maybe a week of high-deductible coverage, if that – not a full year. Even $695 won’t cover a month for a family, or two months for a single 20-something. And IIRC you can avoid the penalty by not having any refund they can take it out of.
All of Obamascare is a clusterfuck at this point.
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@Persnick, no, you can’t avoid the penalty–they will continue to rack it up on your ‘account’ with interest and penalty year over year. Bet on it.
But yes, Obamascare is a clusterfuck at this point and forevermore.