<p>I'm not going to comment at this time over whether Obamacare is great or not. I simply wanted to highlight the fact that the health insurance premiums for college students who buy separate policies are scheduled to rapidly increase as a result. </p>
<p>This issue particularly affects lower income students who are not under a parent's plan. (At the same time, there have been major benefits for students up to age 26 who have been able to receive coverage under their parent's plan.)</p>
<p>The article describes how New Jersey has required all college students to have health insurance, but the State is considering removing the requirement because the costs to students are about to greatly increase. </p>
<p>It is far too soon to tell what effect Obamacare will have. But IMO many insurance companies are imposing unreasonable increases this year, because it’s the last chance they’ll have to do it.</p>
<p>Many of the changes under the health reform are already in place. We haven’t noticed any out of the ordinary increases in premiums, just the standard increases, mainly due to poor health or employees not using their plans responsibly. “Children” under the age of 26 can stay on their parent’s plan regardless of student status, marital status or dependency.</p>
<p>The fundamental reason that these student health insurance policies are going to increase in cost is because the original policies were often terrible insurance policies that covered very little in the way of expenses – $10,000 max on a hospitalization, or $5,000 max on chemotherapy, or $250 on an ER visit. Most students don’t get ill enough to run up large bills, but for those students who do get ill, these policies could leave them tens of thousands of dollars in debt. In fact, the policies were so bad that they weren’t acceptable to the U.S. State Department for foreign students studying here on student visas – they were required to get much broader and better coverage.</p>
<p>Health reform may have been the trigger that required these policies to dramatically increase benefits (and costs), but they were a pernicious fraud and should have been shut down years ago. How many eighteen or nineteen year olds can look at an insurance policy and tell that the coverage limits are laughably inadequate? And the schools didn’t care – they got spiffed on every policy sold in many cases.</p>
<p>It is not too soon at all; in fact, insurance companies and businesses have been gearing up for this for quite some time.</p>
<p>Additionally, this is <em>not</em> the “last chance they’ll have to do it,” because insurance companies are already mandated by law to refund 80-85% of all monies paid in that are not spent directly on health care. (The exception is for administrative costs.) </p>
<p>(I got my refund. $9. I mailed it to a political campaign.)</p>
<p>Insurance companies are not raking in money now to prepare for the future. It’s also a myth that the “Affordable Care Act” will actually give people access to affordable health care.</p>
<p>^^ Most students probably don’t have preexisting conditions which could price them out of the market. But for us middle-agers with a preexisting condition or two, the ban on medical underwriting is going to be a godsend.</p>
<p>arabrab is correct–the plans have to cover a lot more, thus they are more expensive. The biggest cost increase will come from the unlimited coverage on plans. </p>
<p>LasMa–a lot of kids have pre-existing conditions, asthma, allergies, depression, diabetes, cancer, etc., etc. ,etc. </p>
<p>marbling–the ACA will allow people that could not get insurance before access to insurance and that is the goal. It will be affordable for lower income people with the sliding scale exchanges all states have to have now. If you look at states that already have these plans in place, MA and MN specifically, they have some of the lowest, on average, premiums nationally (for everyone, not just lower income people). Companies are actually seeing increases off set because of the consumer driven plans that have become more popular, the “high deductible” plans. They force people to be responsible for their insurance and not run to the ER for a sinus infection and to shop around for a better cost test, etc. I was looking up CT scans when our DD needed one and there was an $800 difference in cost between 3 or 4 clinics/hospitals in our area. That is a LOT of money.</p>
<p>I think that MA has pretty high rates for services and insurance but I’m comparing them to NH. My experience is one son working in MA and coworkers that live in MA. I was a bit surprised at how touchy they were about Governor Patrick’s proposals for tax increases. I thought that tax increases in MA weren’t a big deal.</p>
<p>Without getting political, I heard that the “bronze” obamacare plan will cost approx 4000 annually per person (eg. 16000 for a family of four). </p>
<p>We pay a lot as a small business, but the family policy now would currently cost us around 13000 (for however many kids). As it is, we have only one kid, and to insure ourselves, the cheapest way would be one parent/child policy and one single adult policy. This costs about 500 less per year than the family, and two single adult only policies cost less than a two adult (h.w or domestic partners or two same sex), also by around 500 per year. </p>
<p>We already pay alot in NJ because they can not exclude people from ins due to preexisting (although you may have a period of no coverage for the preexisting - and the rules for this vary. If I hire someone and sign them up right away, there is no preexisting. BUT if they don’t sign up right away, and have a gap of no coverage for longer than 60 or maybe 90 days, they will have a preexisting exclusion for certain things for something like 6 months or a year.)</p>
<p>I dropped D from our policy for her college plan, which is comprehensive not bare bones. Her policy is around 2100 per year, and to keep her on my plan was around 3600 per year. Her college requires either the college plan or a plan that is at least as good.</p>
<p>Some of the small business options are going away because of obama care, and we will have less choice for 2014 from our current company.</p>
<p>I think all will end up with less choice as all options must meet the various parameters set by the law - not what people might have chosen for themselves.</p>
<p>Personally, I always would have preferred a catastrophic policy with a fairly high deductible(10,000 or more), and a lower premium. The HSA was a good idea in my view. This has not been available for perhaps 8 years in my area. The HSA plan was not much savings since then.</p>
<p>BCEagle91–just make sure you are comparing apples to apples and that plan for plan you are looking at the same costs. There are a lot of variables as well and unless your son works for the same company you can’t really compare net rates to individual employees from one company to the next. One company may have higher rates because of a bad claim year yet pay 90% of the premiums for their employees so it looks like they cost less but in reality it costs 40% more, or whatever. MA is a high tax state but that is not what we are talking about.</p>
<p>BCEagle91–maybe yes, maybe no, especially in health care. A hospital in Boston is probably going to be busier so they can spread their costs across more people.</p>
<p>I just did a search through our plan for a CT Scan. It was $50 less in Boston than in Nashua …</p>
<p>You still have the usual and customary costs and the negotiated prices by the various insurance companies. There is a stop/loss for the company there as well.</p>
<p>Yes, but the hospital workers have to pay twice as much in rent, more in taxes, more for car insurance, sales taxes on products, higher grocery costs, etc. And there are parking or train costs too. Getting services like laundry, food, supplies is more expensive just because access is harder in a big city.</p>
<p>I don’t know if spreading your costs across more people actually saves those people money - it might just go to the bottom line.</p>
<p>Nashua has a pretty big complex of medical buildings in the downtown area and serves a number of suburbs in NH and MA so I imagine that they don’t have many problems keeping their staff busy. If they did, they’d close down the operations.</p>
<p>Insurance operates on the law of large numbers. Generally the more people you have using a facility, the lower the costs will be. Because Nashua is so close to Boston, they still have to have competitive wages or they won’t get people to work there. It might be a little more expensive, but not enough to really make a difference. The Usual and Customary between those two cities is still going to be the same or very similar.</p>
<p>That doesn’t seem to be the case from some Blue Cross data that I just looked at.</p>
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<p>Untrue. Why did DataGravity locate in Nashua? My company had the choice to locate in MA (we were looking at the Wang Towers) but chose to build in Nashua. The reason was the many NH employees that didn’t want to pay MA taxes. We also wanted to keep our commutes short.</p>
<p>Take a look at what minimum-wage retail gets paid in Nashua and compare it to what the same jobs get pain over the border in MA.</p>
<p>California is facing a shortage of doctors. 30% are going to retire in the next few years. So the California legislature is looking to expand who can perform medical services. There’s a bill pending that would allow pharmacists, optometrists and nurses to act like doctors for certain things: have pharmacists monitor diabetics for example. </p>
<p>Meanwhile our governor actually opposed opening a new medical school in Riverside, which has started anyway with private funding.</p>
<p>Looks like we will be paying more and getting less.</p>
<p>BCEagle91–no, it’s how it works in the health insurance world…people will drive to find a dr they like and a price that is right since it’s not an every day thing. It’s not the same as finding a place to build a building.</p>
<p>According to “Families USA” (a consumer health care group) - nearly one in six young adults aged 18 to 24 has a pre-existing condition that could lead to a denial of coverage under current insurance guidelines.</p>