<p>Won’t the individual mandate also bring in more healthy people and their premiums to cover Aunt Nellie? Isn’t that the idea of the whole reform?</p>
<p>^ Yes. But in order for that to work, somebody will have to pay the extra premiums (employers or employees or individuals). The idea that it’s not going to cost either the employees or employees additional people is to insure everyone is a fallacy.</p>
<p>Oh…that self insured option makes me puke. I pay the fully insured rate but my employer self insures…yes…they managed to get it both ways. The good news is in the legislation, there is no exemption for self insured…they have to provide this coverage too. Too bad it doesn’t cover the gap. </p>
<p>Maybe my stinking employer will see the benefit in collecting my FAMILY premium for the year…and not having to deal with taking the kid OFF the plan and then putting the kid back ON the plan. Gotta hope…ha ha.</p>
<p>I’ll look into a TONIK plan for her in the meantime. It’s designed for healthy young adults…too bad it’s only available in five states…but we’re one of them!!</p>
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<p>I think it is unreralistic to think that young, healthy people are going to go ahead and procure expensive insurance when the penalties for failing to do so are so small. Providing insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions (and I agree they should be covered) that may require very expensive medications and/or treatments throughout a lifetime may well overwhelm the system.</p>
<p>Personally, I think many of us who are able will keep your young healthy adults on our insurance if we can do so for a reasonable price rather than risk having them be uninsured (young adults do suffer accidents & all sorts of things just by being alive). Because they are relatively healthy, they do help subsidize folks who are less healthy and that’s OK with me as well. The idea of being uninsured when you have other options has never appealed to me because I’ve heard/know of too many bad things that may occur.</p>