Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

White supremacy is terrorism.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Everybody saw this coming.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Prices Spreads on 2018 Healthcare.gov

Prices Spreads on 2018 Healthcare.gov

by | 9 Comments

This post is in: 

Healthcare.gov released their public use files this morning so I spent the past couple of hours ripping some data. Below is the map of the least expensive Silver, Gold and choose your own adventure plans relative to Benchmark. My data is stored here.

First thoughts.

1) It is great to have old code that is easy to repurpose.
2) CMS/Healthcare.gov got the data out early enough to allow meaningful window-shopping
3) There are some incredible deals in Tennessee
4) Gold gaps are sometimes a state story (New Mexico or Oklahoma) and sometimes an insurer by insurer story within a state (Georgia)
5) The North Carolina story is massive compression of the price of Gold relative to Silver compared to 2017 but not a flip in price order.

Reader Interactions

9Comments

  2. 2.

    guachi

    So if I’m reading this correctly, for the Least Expensive Gold map the green means the Gold plan is cheaper than the benchmark silver? And, conversely, in a place like Georgia the Gold plan is far more expensive than the benchmark silver?

  4. 4.

    Kelly

    Window shopping healthcare.gov I see we’re down to 3 insurance companies here in Marion County, Oregon. Best I can recall we had 8 or 10 a couple years ago. Kaiser has increased it’s price advantages. I can get a Kaiser Gold plan w/$2000 deductible for $17 less than Moda silver w/$7000 deduct and $27 less than Providence w/$5000 deductible. That would be a compelling bargain but my wife does not like Kaiser and the clinic is 30 to 45 minutes away vs our local docs that are 10 minutes away. Much to think about.

  7. 7.

    Sab

    Yikes! My gold plan with $750 deductible is going from *$856 per month to $1056 per month with $7500 (rounded) out of pocket max.I think that max is way up. At least I still have preexisting condition coverage.
    Thank you BJ callers to Congresscritters.

    Hoping to hang in until medicare kicks in and hoping to still have medicare when I retired that they promised me for my whole working life when I paid in to the system (45 years).

  8. 8.

    ProfDamatu

    Wow. I’m in a part of VA that’s down to only one insurer, Optima, and the rate increases are truly impressive. My projected subsidy ($580 or so) for next year is almost double this year’s post-subsidy premium ($318 for silver; I don’t recall if it was the benchmark plan). Only 5 plans are being offered on-Marketplace: two bronze, two silver, and one gold which looks to be such a bad deal that I kind of wonder why they bothered. I’m still digesting the details, but it kind of looks like they might be doing something weird with the bronze plans; when I used the estimation of annual costs tool, the bronzes are projected to have the lowest cost for high use. This may be because the deductibles are quite high across the board ($6k or $7,350 for the two bronzes; $2,850 or $4,600 for the silvers; $1,500 for the gold), and most of the plans have the highest out of pocket max allowed (including the gold). The premiums are in the mid-$600s for bronze, low-mid $800s for silver, and close to $1,200 for gold pre-subsidy (using an early-40s non-smoker, but living in an area which you’d think wouldn’t be super-expensive in terms of medical costs, but we got one hell of an area multiplier this coming year). I don’t recall what the bronze and gold prices were last year, but my pre-subsidy premium for a silver plan was $395. I think the gold plan rate is going up by just about as much.

    Will definitely be making a call to my tax guru for advice on making absolutely, positively sure that my MAGI stays below the cutoff for subsidies, because there is no way in hell I could afford those premiums without one!

  9. 9.

    Middle-aged fogey

    I continue to enjoy and appreciate your analyses, Mr. Anderson. One request, though, please: Whenever you include that “Silver and Gold Gaps” graphic (and other interactive elements like it) in a post, can you put the graphic below a “Read More” fold, please? Such graphics chew up memory and cause the entire BJ site to crash (again and again) on my iPad. Keeping them off the home page and restricting them solely to individual posting pages will help optimize the BJ user experience (well, my user experience, but I’m not sure I’m alone in having issues with these elements). Thanks again.

Comments are closed.