Marketplace insurance tax return !!

[Das Delfin]

Keep the change you rich, 3% bastard. You made money and you had to pay up.

The silver lining is that I'm finally stable enough to pay the difference and get on with it.

I cut down on my day job to 2 days per week when I started my second degree and they told me that with my estimated income I was ineligible for any price breaks. Even the absolute worst plans (which are pretty much worthless if you look at the coverage they offer) were over $1,000/yr. So much for "affordable care," lol. On the plus side they gave me an exemption from the tax penalty because I was below whatever arbitrary threshold.

Any kind of decent plan with a "low" deductible of 2k is around 300/mo. At that point why even have health insurance? I'd have to get sick twice a month to break even. My lifestyle doesn't put me at risk of serious injury or cancer.

I changed healthcare providers mid year so there may be some kind of exemption or at least lower fee for me as well. Who knows.

[gwb72tii]

He is smarter alright. He may be a 1%'er.

Shocking this affordable health care isn't all unicorns and roses. Who would have thunk! I cannot wait to see Bernie give us all free college. It is a constutional right!?!?

Was hoping your op was sarcasm
Free is best, no?

[Dozyproductions]

My lifestyle doesn't put me at risk of serious injury or cancer.

I had the same plan. Then I got epilepsy from nowhere.

The dental plans suck as well. Good thing for TJ being so close to where I live.

[Das Delfin]

I had the same plan. Then I got epilepsy from nowhere.

The dental plans suck as well. Good thing for TJ being so close to where I live.

That's no fun. I don't have dental or vision. I stocked up on contact lenses and new glasses before I had to switch providers :up:

And even if I opted for an expensive health plan, I'd be afraid of the insurance company finding a way to weasel out of covering me if something came up. Damn the man!

[Das Delfin]

Was hoping your op was sarcasm
Free is best, no?

he was def being sarcastic. I wish there was a quick way to sort this kind of thing out. It sucks that people dealing with this bullshit have to wait until hopefully there's a new guy elected who will make it more affordable or another guy elected who will restore everything back to how it was.. just doesn't make any sense to require something by law and then make it prohibitively expensive. What else is like that?

[TimeMachinE30]

Guns. A $200 tax stamp. Annual registration fees for particular items. While not necessarily prohibitively expensive, certainly not in comparison to the price tags on some of those items requiring such taxes, it is something the gubmint is good at: taxing the living shit out of it.

And it was certainly sarcasm. Nearly every post is really.. the healthcare situation was so obviously bullshit that so many folks bought hook, line and sinker. Thing is, some still believe in it. It will only get worse. The free shit these puppets are preaching now is insane.. free college? Free? What is the saying.. oh ya, ain't nothing free.

[Kershaw]

Nothing is free, it's a tax. For a better community. Everyone pays into it and everyone is healthier and happier and protected from something that could ruin the rest of their life. That's the ideal anyway.

You know, kind of like the police. :-P

It definitely was ruined by the healthcare industry, but it'll get better. If Germany can have socialized medicine and education, we should be able to do it too. In Germany, college is free, but the entrance exams are tough. No whining about it, you either make it or you don't. If you don't make it, you don't go to college. There, going to college actually means something. Here, if you're middle class or up, you go to college like it's second high school.

[Wschnitz]

Nothing is free, it's a tax. For a better community. Everyone pays into it and everyone is healthier and happier and protected from something that could ruin the rest of their life. That's the ideal anyway.

You know, kind of like the police. :-P

It definitely was ruined by the healthcare industry, but it'll get better. If Germany can have socialized medicine and education, we should be able to do it too. In Germany, college is free, but the entrance exams are tough. No whining about it, you either make it or you don't. If you don't make it, you don't go to college. There, going to college actually means something. Here, if you're middle class or up, you go to college like it's second high school.

Exactly.

And I see so much BS about how ACA is the end of the world etc.

I know friends and profs who get healthcare through ACA cause it wasnt job provided and isnt affordable from a private company.

[gwb72tii]

Nothing is free, it's a tax. For a better community. Everyone pays into it and everyone is healthier and happier and protected from something that could ruin the rest of their life. That's the ideal anyway.

You know, kind of like the police. :-P

It definitely was ruined by the healthcare industry, but it'll get better. If Germany can have socialized medicine and education, we should be able to do it too. In Germany, college is free, but the entrance exams are tough. No whining about it, you either make it or you don't. If you don't make it, you don't go to college. There, going to college actually means something. Here, if you're middle class or up, you go to college like it's second high school.

nothing is free as you know.
until competition is introduced into healthcare there will be no containment of costs, that is until all of us have a reason to shop for the cost of an MRI, nobody providing MRI's has any reason to contain cost. just the opposite as charging insurance companies for the MRI is a game providers play to maximize their reimbursements. They are will always charge the max they can get away with, instead of competing for my business.

[Kershaw]

Dude, that is the most laughable thing you have ever said. So where is the competition containing the costs when we pay waaaaay more than the rest of the world for the same procedures? Sounds like Grade A bullshit to me.

[gwb72tii]

There is none, that's the point. You have no incentive to save costs because you don't pay anything, or very little. Your cost has been the $25 copayment. The consumer of healthcare is out of the cost equation, or was until obamacare was rammed down our throats.
One of the unintended consequences of obamacare is because deductibles are so high, mine is $5000, costs in fact do matter now because I have to pay, not the insurance company. And cash costs have been about 30% less than they are when submitted to an insurance company.

[mrsleeve]

give it up George you know who your talking to .................

[Das Delfin]

gwb72tii, thought this would be interesting for you:

1 - my deductible is the same as yours. I've been asking around and apparently, although there are other more expensive plans with lower deductibles, 5k is nothing compared to the cost of a minor hospital stay. I've never had to use it but there's always "just in case." Makes me feel better because I don't want to pony up the cash for a "better" plan.

Also..fun fact. After you pay your deductible the hospital and your insurance company haggle back and forth on what each will accept for/as payment for your hospital bill. This means that even though the hospital billed you for 20k and you paid a 5k deductible towards that, the insurance company may come back and tell the hospital they'll pay a remaining balance of 10k and the hospital settles. So what about your 5k that the hospital suddenly doesn't need? That money could have stayed in your pocket the whole time. You should get a percentage of the "discount." But then again, that's between you and the insurance company, not you and the hospital. So why is the hospital billing you for money they don't need?

2 - you're thinking within the box. From what I understand ACA was meant to be an "in between" step between what healthcare has been in the past and a single payer system. A single payer system in a perfect world would entail the govt paying various hospitals for their services which would eliminate the back and forth between insurance companies and hospitals. And because it's the govt there would be a policy of "pay up or shut up." Downside to govt-run public services is we've all been to the DMV... which brings me to:

3 - you do have a point - the backbone of this country is capitalism and it seems whenever govt infringes on free enterprise bureaucracy is involved and everything slows down - bad for the layman who elected the official in the first place. So what we need is govt incentives rather than punishments. A bonus for doing good instead of reprimand for not doing good enough.

I wish it were possible to regulate positive get-it-done attitude


Any opposing opinions please chime in.

[Das Delfin]

Dude, that is the most laughable thing you have ever said. So where is the competition containing the costs when we pay waaaaay more than the rest of the world for the same procedures? Sounds like Grade A bullshit to me.

A lot of it is fucking bullshit with doctors making their money form patient visits rather than patient outcomes but there is still the fact that most drug research is done in the US and that money has to come from somewhere.

The more and more I read into it I'm seeing the ACA as a crapshoot. The idea is to make it so the poor can afford healthcare at the expense of the middle class. So where is the incentive to move up from being poor to middle class? I thought the whole deal with being poor was that it sucked and you should always want to move up??

I mean that's the argument I'm sure a lot of people use but the in reality a lot of people are poor because they're stupid. So it makes sense that they're poor. But that creates crime-ridden neighborhoods and we as a country can't have that... sigh

[BraveUlysses]

Dude, that is the most laughable thing you have ever said. So where is the competition containing the costs when we pay waaaaay more than the rest of the world for the same procedures? Sounds like Grade A bullshit to me.

No, he's right. Outside of medicare, which actually has price controls, we're at the mercy of a system where individuals have no incentive to price shop. And let's be honest, sometimes with medical needs, you don't get an opportunity to shop prices in an emergency.

The AMA isn't exactly helping in any way because they intentionally limit how many people can become qualified doctors in this country, in an effort to make that doctors are scarce enough to be very well paid.