Mass. is open for business!

[Crabcake Johnny]

http://mahealthconnector.org

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Ok, let's review this a bit. I'm 40, my wife is 44 and my son is 5. I put us in a boston zip and chose retail as my trade. I cannot qualify for assistance with my premium unless I make less than $30,636 - so that's out.

My family's premium? Well it seems I can pick between $700 and $1,000 a month. If I'm understanding this correctly Mass, starting July 1st, is now telling my family that unless I crap $700 a month I'm violating their law? This will be a complete cluster** Right now we pay $350.

 

[BKrocko]

That could become a circus. Do I understand this correctly - are they cutting agents and brokers out of the loop? State run EHealth quotes? If so, could be ominous signs for all of us. Is Michael Moore Gov. in Mass?

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

No, brokers are still in business: http://www.mahealthconnector.org/portal/site/connector/menuitem.b605e79b28ec5a9ddbb37757d7468a0c/

This, however, only seems to be for group brokers. I'm not seeing anything about how agents selling individual plans are affected.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Interesting also - Mass also is dictating the coverage guidelines and some of them seem to target companies like Mega and UA:

*Individual deductible cannot exceed $2,000 - $4,000 family
*OOP cannot exceed $5000 individual, $10,000 family
*No per-illness limits
*No fee schedules or indemnity plans

I'm assuming Mega Life is out of business effective July 1.

 

[Guest]

I notice that FTE is set at 35 hours a week.

My bet is a lot of employers will look at keeping their doors open only 34.9 hours a week... or they will try to contract out as much work as possible (probably won't save any money) or hire fewer people.

This might be a statewide job-killer.

Al

 

[Expat]

Anyone know if the premiums where that high before the State got involved. Those prices are completely out of sight.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

I haven't researched this fully yet. I can't imagine that the income is $36,636 or for a family to get assistance - that cannot be correct.

If I have a family of 3 and make $40,000 a year there's just no way I could pull it off. That's $40,000 a year in income and $8,000 for insurance or 20% of my income going just for health insurance. If this is true, they will either BK families right and left or create law-breakers.

 

[djs]

I've always wondered, why does the government think its the role of the employer to pay for health insurance? Can I get a law passed that my employer has to provide me with a car? oh, wait a sec, I am my own employer.....

Dan

 

[djs]

Anyone know if the premiums where that high before the State got involved. Those prices are completely out of sight.

Why is Massachusetts addressing this problem now?​

​

Strong base of employer-sponsored insurance: 98% of employers with 100+ employees
and 65% of smaller employers contribute to employees’ health insurance​

​

Substantial existing funds are spent on the uninsured: over $600 million in the
Uncompensated Care Pool​

​

Reauthorization of federal Medicaid waiver requires Massachusetts to redeploy funds to
reduce the number of uninsured people​

​

Political leadership creates the opportunity to take a major step forward to substantially
reduce uninsurance​

I don't know what the population of Mass is, though they are currently paying $600M for coverage for the unisured, plus they are looking at $90M in rate relief for Medicaid to hospitals and physicians.

Okay, I went and looked it up, population of about 6.4M. That means they are spending about $100 per capita on healthcare, albeit, there are an estimated 550,000 people that don't have insurance, so they are paying $1100 annually per uninsured.

In taxation math, since this is currently being paid by taxpayers, moving it to the employers frees up that money to be spent elsewhere, allowing employers to pay twice, once directly, and once in the taxes they currently pay.

Now, the government has been proven many times to not be as efficient, so we'll need to add a layer of bureacrats to oversee that this program works well. And because we don't want fraud, we'll have to add oversight to the bureacrats. Also, we know the insurance companies will have some problems adapting to this new system, so we must add some help to assist them and make sure everything goes well. Oh yeah, and we need to contract out for a fancy new website. Now, the $1100 annual cost per uninsured is about $5000 because we want to do it right. To pay for this, we'll add a small portion of it back into the premium of the currently insured, after all, they pay for it now anyway.

When I finished with this, I have to agree that there should be a 24% reduction in individual health insurance cost, due to increasing the number of insureds to spread the cost of providing health care over a greater number of people. That is, of course, unless someone wants to use the plan.....

Dan

P.S. If you follow this logic, please run for office. You are well qualified.