Ezra Klein makes a good point about next week and Obamacare implementation — the mechanics are going to be messy: Jan. 1 isn’t likely to be a glitch-free day for Obamacare. There will be people who try to use their insurance and find they can’t, or it’s not the plan they meant to buy, or …
Anderson On Health Insurance
Mandate exemption expansion
By training I was a policy guy. By career, I’m a symbolic analytical plumber. By hobby, I’m a political junkie. The recent announcement that individuals whose non-PPACA compliant individual plans are being cancelled on Jan. 1, 2014 is first and foremost a political decision with plumbing and policy impacts. Ezra Klein from earlier this week: …
Good news everybody
Via Politico: More than one million Americans signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act during the first three weeks of December, including 500,000 through the federal exchange, President Barack Obama announced Friday. Via ABC News: The Obama administration says nearly 3.9 million people have qualified for coverage through the health care law’s …
Will you stay or will you go
Networks participation is extraordinarily plastic. Providers can leave networks at will, and entry can be anywhere from signing a new contract to being invited in to being wined, dined and sixty-nined until the provider agrees to participate. In the past year for Mayhew Insurance, providers have left our primary commercial (non-Exchange) network for the following reasons: …
Changing plans — not just for the Exchanges
Plan designs change all the time. That is why the whole brouhaha over the “If you like your plan, you can keep it” was so amazingly stupid but effective. As I was digging for articles for a post that I want to write on narrow networks, I saw this interesting piece from northwestern Pennsylvania: It’s …
Changing plans — not just for the ExchangesPost + Comments (39)
Snipping Costs
I got snipped today. I was also a minor contributor to high healthcare costs due to insurance benefit design. Vasectomies are very straightforward, generic procedures with few complications. It is a fairly low skill operation. It could be done almost anywhere. However I elected to have it done at a regional academic medical center. This …
Getting old is expensive
Getting old sucks and it is expensive. Covering kids and young adults had been an easy fall-back option for Democrats and some Republicans prior to the passage of PPACA because it is an easy thing to do. SCHIP expansion was one of the first bills that passed the 2009 Congress with only two Democrats in the …