Obamacare, Health Insurance, Etc.

Timothy

New Member
With Obamacare's passing comes new mandatory health insurance laws, so I was wondering how many of you here are going to sign up for insurance through the government, how many of you are signing up through your employer, and how many of you opted to go without insurance and just pay the fee next year on your taxes. I am in the latter group, having opted to pay the 1% of my income since it's so much cheaper than either government or private insurance.
 

Bear

New Member
We will also be going without, in part because our state is not participating. We will just have to pay the fine if there is one and hope no one gets sick. My kids are currently on Medicaid so as long as none of that changes they will be covered and my wife and I will just have to stay well and uninjured.
 

olderthandirt

New Member
I didn't think states had a choice in whether or not to participate. My understanding is that it is a federal law now. We've had mandatory insurance here for several years, so now we would not only take a hit in federal taxes, but we still have the penalty on state taxes.
 

Bear

New Member
I live in Georgia and one of the ways the federal government planned to help insure the lower classes was to expand Medicare. Georgia and about 20 other states are not expanding their Medicare plans. Here is a map of the states that are not expanding.
 

BigPapa

New Member
It still sounds like there is a whole lot of confusion on what the law actually entails. First, unless you are eligible for the expanded Medicaid (if your state is participating), you are not purchasing insurance from the government. The government is supplying a marketplace in which you can purchase private insurance. If you make under a certain amount you can get a very substantial government subsidy, which might make carrying insurance cheaper than paying the fine.
 

yabadoo

New Member
When Barack campaigned for President he promised to provide universal healthcare for all Americans. He lied. I will be paying the $100 penalty. I work 35 hours a week due to my employer not wanting to hire anybody full time. I make too much to qualify for medicaid. There's not way that I could afford the Obamacare rates. So, if I get seriously hurt, you all will be footing the bill because I'll just declare bankruptcy. The capitalists have kept me so poor that I have accumulated zero assets. So, I have nothing to lose by declaring bankruptcy.
 

Victor

New Member
He promised universal healthcare (UHC) but due to checks and balances in our government (perhaps you've heard of them?) he was unable to deliver; that's different from outright lying. Democrats had to compromise with the exchanges instead of passing UHC. It's too bad because I think UHC would have been much better.

We are not eligible to sign up on the exchanges because my wife has insurance through her employer and the premium is not above the cutoff percentage of income.
 

Timothy

New Member
We did the math on insurance through my employer versus insurance through the Marketplace versus paying the fine and with the fine only being $95 or 1% of your income, we come out better just to pay the fine this year. We may not even have to pay the fine, however, because we would qualify for Medicaid coverage if our state had elected to expand it. Seems like I remember reading that if you qualify for Medicaid coverage but your state doesn't expand it, then you are exempt from having to take out private insurance.
 

jason

Administrator
Staff member
Got my letter stating my insurance is to be terminated. So now I'm having to go to double the deductible with the new plans. Not really sure which way I'm going to go now. The wife and kids were on a separate plan and they are allowed to stay on until the summer of 2014 then it looks like their deductible will be moved from 3k to 6k along with a price increase according to that letter.
 

BigPapa

New Member
All of you realize that the Marketplace prices do not reflect the price after government subsidy, right? Also, Victor is correct. Obama and most Democrats would have loved to see a single payer system. With the Tea Partiers crying socialism and doing everything in their power to stop it, it wasn't exactly a slam dunk. If you are one of the people being dumped from your policy, guess what, it is because your policy wasn't good enough to pass muster. There is no rule saying that you have to go to the policy that your current insurance company is offering in exchange. Go check out the Marketplace. That is what it was designed for.
 

yabadoo

New Member
When Barack campaigned for President he promised to provide universal healthcare for all Americans. He lied. I will be paying the $100 penalty. I work 35 hours a week due to my employer not wanting to hire anybody full time. I make too much to qualify for medicaid. There's not way that I could afford the Obamacare rates. So, if I get seriously hurt, you all will be footing the bill because I'll just declare bankruptcy. The capitalists have kept me so poor that I have accumulated zero assets. So, I have nothing to lose by declaring bankruptcy.
Sorry for the confusion, friends. I meant to type "There's no way that I could afford the Obamacare rates". I'm not sure how that "t" got in there! By the way, I have a nickname for Obama. It's "Fauxbama".
 

jason

Administrator
Staff member
All of you realize that the Marketplace prices do not reflect the price after government subsidy, right? Also, Victor is correct. Obama and most Democrats would have loved to see a single payer system. With the Tea Partiers crying socialism and doing everything in their power to stop it, it wasn't exactly a slam dunk. If you are one of the people being dumped from your policy, guess what, it is because your policy wasn't good enough to pass muster. There is no rule saying that you have to go to the policy that your current insurance company is offering in exchange. Go check out the Marketplace. That is what it was designed for.
The subsidy does not help when the deductible is doubled.

But you are right since I did not have pregnancy on my insurance since I'm on my own and did not want to spend the $100 extra a month my policy was not up to par. My bad.

And I have been checking policies since news broke that BCBS was dropping over 600,000 people in my state. Sadly the healthcare.gov site does not want to work, I am going through a salesman.

This system was designed to either fail so we can go to a single payer system, or to help further keep people down. Look at how many companies are dropping people to part time or just taking the penalty. You now how to work two part time jobs to make less then you were on the full time job.
 

Timothy

New Member
All of you realize that the Marketplace prices do not reflect the price after government subsidy, right?

Go check out the Marketplace. That is what it was designed for.
With all due respect, what good does it do to check out the Marketplace if it isn't even reflective of what you would actually be paying? How much sense does it make to quote someone an outrageously unaffordable rate (for subpar coverage at that) and then offer them a subsidy but not reflect the amount of the subsidy in the quote? If Marketplace prices aren't reflective of post-subsidy prices, how in the world is anyone supposed to know whether or not they can truly afford the insurance?!
 

Bear

New Member
I could be mistaken but my understanding is that you have to pay for everything up front and the subsidy will come in the form of a check at the end of the year. That does not help most people out at all...I don't have the money up front to give, and most people I know don't either.
 

Timothy

New Member
Agreed, Bear. I know we don't have the ability to pay the almost $400/month PER PERSON that we were quoted, even if a subsidy does come back around at the end of the year. That would literally make it to where my wife would be paying to go to work!
 
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