Steerpike

Holy Crap! $1,600 for self! How many employees in the company?

scrubbedexpat091

When I tried to get Cobra in 2003 after losing my airline job, the payments were gonna be 1,100 a month for just me, quite a shock considering I paid $0 normally. (the company at the time covered the monthly premium in full for a single employee.) I declined the coverage.

We about 30,000 employees company wide, but we were not all on the same insurance plan. In California we had Kaiser the only state where Kaiser was used, and we probably had less then 500 total employees in California.

Michael

So now you understand why I said your Cobra premium was low.

Steerpike

Have you been able to get a quote yet from one of the exchanges? The more I read here, the better their pricing seems to be!

Bob

75-80? Something like that before they imploded.

Mrs Danvers

I remember being at one of the Mandatory Health Insurance meetings before Obama was even thinking of running for president.

Though we were insured at no cost, they made you pay a lot for having spouse and children insured. When we baulked at the cost they simply said "you have to understand, nurses are practically the most expensive group to insure. You're around sick people all day and are likely to have mechanical injuries"

Does anyone miss civilized society and the NHS around here?

scrubbedexpat099

I had a chat this morning, a busy day so only now getting back to it.

For me cheapest is 405.55 with a 5,500 deductible, 6,350 max.
Bronze

Silver is 544 with 2,600 deductible 6,000 max.

There was only the one silver, all the others are bronze, nothing Gold or Platinum.

There are other issues I have to think about, sounds like I may need to naturalise.

scrubbedexpat099

Duh, there is a Platinum option, 1060 pm 500 deductible 1500 max.

Michael

You must not have told us your correct age before at 33 years old. I just browsed the Colorado site using "Find a Plan" and for Boulder (zip code 80301), the cheapest Bronze plan is $174 per month and the cheapest Silver plan is $229 per month, the cheapest Gold plan is $269, and there isn't any Platinum plans.

Even at 55 years old, the prices are significantly less than you quoted.

So what gives? Are you quoting family prices?

If it is family prices for two adults age 33, then the price is $349 for Bronze, $459 for Silver, and $539 for Gold.

So what are your ages, family size, and zip code?

Michael

Mississippi Blues

That is likely the case for William and Leslie Johnson of Jackson County, since the state decided not to expand the Medicaid program for the poor under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. As a result, nearly 300,000 adults there will fall through the cracks of healthcare reform.

Among those states, Mississippi faces one of the most dire situations. It tops the charts for poor-health indicators: highest in poverty, second-highest in obesity, highest in diabetes and highest in pre-term births.

For the Johnsons, the struggle for health coverage has been a years-long battle. In the 16 years since her birth, their daughter, Mackenzie, has already had 10 major surgeries to treat her club foot, dislocated hips and malformed spine, all due to a rare form of spina bifida that causes the spinal cord to split. (The Johnsons also have an 11-year-old son, Tyler.)

A major operation to insert two metal rods helped to straighten a 70-degree curve in Mackenzie's spine that was collapsing her lungs and making it difficult for her to breathe. It improved her condition to the point where she no longer qualified for a special Medicaid program for disabled children living at home. She hasn't had health insurance since last June.

In Mississippi, a two-parent working family of four earning $10,000 to $23,500 would not be eligible for assistance either through Medicaid or the exchange because the state did not expand Medicaid.

In rejecting the Medicaid expansion, Republican Governor Phil Bryant is turning down an estimated $426 million in federal funds for next year. He has argued that the administrative costs borne by the state would be too high. A report by the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning estimated the cost of Medicaid expansion for the state at $8.5 million in 2014, rising to $159 million in 2025 as more people enroll in the program and federal subsidies step down from 100 percent initially to 90 percent.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...99304320131004

So it appears that Mississippi also has the lowest Medicaid income requirements in the country at an income no more that 42% of the poverty level to qualify for Medicaid compared to New York at 150%, ACA at 133%, and original Medicaid recommended at 100% by the federal government.

scrubbedexpat091

I am still in Canada but have been watching closing as I may return to California, and based on my lower then average income i put in 20,000 a year with a San Diego Zip as that is where I would be living if I went back, 34 years old, single coverage and this is what I got back.

Bronze 60 plans range in the 11-17/month range but the co-payments and deductibles are out this world for someone like me who needs monthly doctor visits and medication.

Enhanced Silver 87 ranges 47 a month with Health Net to 93 with Kaiser with the highest being 112 with Blue Cross.

If I was going to go back. For me I would go with Kaiser, the coverage looks decent, and co-pays are mostly in the $15-$20 range, and I have had Kaiser in the past so familiar with them.

But its hard to decide to go back to stay in Canada since I pay nothing out of pocket currently here, and being low income most of my medication is covered, but I miss my family too, its a hard decision to make, you get very comfortable with not having medical tied to having money.

I keep thinking back to 2012 when I was in the hospital for a total of 6 weeks (not all at once) and how much that would have cost me in the US. Being in the hospital and knowing you will never see a bill, removes a huge amount of stress, I remember in 2003 in the US and spending a week in the hospital and all the stress of not knowing how much each day was costing.

Only complaint I have with the Canadian system is preventive care isn't the best, but everything else is pretty much on par with what you would find in the US care wise.

scrubbedexpat099

The three factors you need to get the number quoted for an individual in CO are:

Age
Tobacco use
ZIP

You do not have any of that info for me.

Plus the qualification:

Rollover help is available for most of the terms below. Please note that the rates you pay may be lower than the amount displayed if you are eligible for financial assistance such as advance premium tax credits (APTC) or reduced copays and deductibles. 'Start your application' to see if you are eligible for any of these assistance programs.

paul32x

I managed to set up an account today (I live in FL), got right to the end, and the verification part of the system is down, so I have to go back to it in a couple of days and finish it off, but at least made some progress as it hasn't been working at all for me for the last couple of days. (Mind, tonight I tried IE and it worked, before I was trying Firefox, so I suppose it could have been that).

scrubbedexpat099

I tried yesterday and my Account seems to have gone again. I could not raise the energy to call. Maybe today.

Michael

It amazes me that some people believe that the republican party are fiscal conservatives and want to do what is best for their constituents. In the following article, the obstructionists to ACA have put so many roadblocks and costs to administer ACA that one organization turned down $833,000 in federal funding since if they accepted that money, they were restricted in telling people how the program works.

South Carolina has proposed refunding any penalty imposed by the federal government in 2014 by not signing up for ACA. So South Carolina will be spending millions to keep people uninsured and Mississippi is turning down about $500 million in expanded Medicaid funding because it is too expensive to administer the program at about $2.80 per resident.

Some states require navigators (people who help people understand ACA) to not only be trained by the federal government but also by the state government and requires a license to be a navigator costing the group that sponsors the navigator so much money that it could literally not allow them to help people with the federal funding that is being provided.

http://t.money.msn.com/saving-money-...-in-red-states

If the republicans can only figure out a way to silence TV, radio, and newspapers about ACA and can put filters on the internet, they will have the problem solved. If the south wants to remain poor, I guess that will be good for the northern states since usually the south gets much more from the federal government per capita than the north and that will reverse the trend.