My healthcare choices

[Tunnelcat]

Well, the Feds ARE telling the insurance companies they now have to insure those people with preexisting conditions. I call that a "life panel". Besides, with a government, if you don't like what they do, you can maybe, possibly, vote them out. If you don't like the ACA, vote out the Democrats next time around. I'd like to see the average person try that with the CEO of a private company.

[callmeslick]

So now under ACA we STILL have the same system of insurance providers and medical review boards trying to steer our decisions on care but we had options in many cases....competition, etc.

except that now, there are a very strict new set of rules that prevents excessive overreach by insurers, especially on emotional/mental health care, and outright service denials.

AND now we add the mother of all bureaucracies, the federal government to Influence those decisions to protect its interest!

how so?

However, unlike the insurance companies vying for our purchasedollars, the FED has no competition and instead uses the law enforcement division to FORCE our decisions to meet their requirements!

The FED who specialized in mucking things up on a scale never conceived of by those private entities!!

And this somehow proves there are no 'death panels' under the Obamacare plan?!? Yea, right, and you can keep your old plan too...

All it proves is the old death panels are to the new ACA one like an air freshener is to a nerve gas attack!!

wow, a trip down fantasy lane, Will.

[Spidey]

If you don't like the ACA, vote out the Democrats next time around. I'd like to see the average person try that with the CEO of a private company.

It’s called voting with bucks…

[Will Robinson]

...
except that now, there are a very strict new set of rules that prevents...

No there are not! There are words on paper that they say make up the Law. But then they arbitrarily suspend any part of it on a whim when they realize that following that "very strict new set of rules " was going to upset the Dem's up coming re-election chances!
Go blow your smoke and denial up some one else's backside.

The prospect of adding the newest and largest federal bureaucracy ever created, directed by political operatives, to the list of people who's decisions and career interests will get in the way of citizens and their medical needs is in NO WAY a reduction of the likely occurrence of a 'death panel' scenario!

You know it and so does anyone else with a lick of sense!

Call it a fantasy and dodge the substance of the assertion all you like, it changes the reality of it not one little bit.

[Foil]

*BUMP* Sorry I've been gone for a while, folks. New job adjustments + holidays + family vacation tends to do that, I suppose. Still catching up with threads, but I will at least provide a long-overdue update on this one:

Long story short, after doing a lot of shopping and coverage comparison, we finally got the pricing for all the different options late in December. Given our parameters (heavily considering coinsurance and high-cost-services coverage), the policies all ended up being HMOs, roughly in the following range:

$2250/$4500 deductible
$6000/$12000 max-out-of-pocket
10% coinsurance
+ Dental coverage

Prices came out at about the following:

COBRA (continuing Anthem BCBS employer plan): ~$1650/month
ACA / Colorado Exchange (individual Anthem BCBS plan): ~$880/month
New employer's plan (Aetna plan, higher deductibles): ~$1250/month

Pretty much a no-brainer.

-------------------------------

Notes / thoughts:

• We thought the Colorado Exchange site (connectforhealthco.com) might be better than healthcare.gov. Not so. The first couple of attempts to create an account failed miserably. Once we got in, and got the plan comparisons working, the data was very thorough, much better than other sites... until the comparison tool got all borked.
• Pricing for the "bronze" level plans on the exchange looked pretty tempting, but the details showed some really poor coverage.
• We ended up choosing an Anthem BCBS plan, partly because of our (mostly good) experience with them under my previous employer, and the fact that our doctors were all still in-network. This may have been a poor choice, because the previous policy data caused significant confusion when I tried to get information about the new policy.
• Surprisingly, once we chose the plan, enrolling on the exchange went fairly smoothly...
• ...After that, it became a %^&*ing nightmare. Zero communication from the carrier a week after enrolling, so I started making calls about my initial premium payment. After roughly five hours waiting on hold (and being hung up on by both humans and automated systems), I finally talked with someone who could not help, but at least provided me with a link to a page where I could make the payment... and then that page was broken for five days.
• At this point, nearly four weeks after enrolling, the only things I've managed to do are: log in to my account online (had to use my previous ID on the site), obtain temporary id cards to confirm my enrollment on 1/1/14, and see the first premium payment go through at my bank. I have yet to get anything beyond an initial invoice from the carrier, though the exchange keeps sending me emails congratulating me on my enrollment.
• Overall, the pricing for the coverage we needed is a little higher than what I had hoped, but not as outrageous as COBRA. With that said, the rest of the process is something I never want to do again.

[vision]

Anyone else notice how Will is out of control with the exclamation points lately?

[callmeslick]

Foil, thanks for getting us the update. In summation, it seems that your experience parallels mine(although I opted for the Platinum plan), right up until your local BC/BS took over. Highmark, here in Delaware, handled all that stuff very smoothly. I already have permanent cards, complete access to a very good website, none of the little annoyances you seemed to go through. They even gave me a followup call after enrollment to alert me to all the details that would unfold over the following two weeks, and were very thorough.

[Spidey]

Foil...looks like they have getting your money figured out.

[Foil]

Heh, sure feels like it. Though I'm quickly learning about the differences between having benefits via an employer vs. having to handle my own. The extra in the paycheck looks nice, but then it goes away...