medicare advantage – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Medicine for the One Percent

David Posnett — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 13:27:56 +0000

We always suspected this: a new study clearly shows that the richer you are, the longer you live in the US of America (Wall Street Journal). This is no small difference! The top 10% (richest) people live on average 10 years longer than the bottom 10% (poorest). Wow! And this is WITH medicare and medicaid, which the political right would have us get rid of all together.

What I would like to see are 2 things.

(1) A comparison with a similar study in civilized “1st world” countries (Canada, UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, etc.) with better health care coverage that covers the entire population.

(2) A historical comparison: an analysis of life expectancy relative to individual wealth 100 , 50, 20 and 10 years ago in the US. I would like to know whether we have made any progress, and whether (as I suspect) progress has been halted or even reversed.

It will take at least 10-50 years for the effects of Obamacare to show up in such a population wide analysis which measures death rates over many years. At present, only a comparison with other countries can tell us something.

Here is a partial response to my question (2) from the article itself which looks at least at 2 different historical time points: 1920 versus 1940. For men there has been an improvement in longevity (5.9% for the richest men and 1.7% for the poorest men). For women the change in longevity is 3.1% for the richest women. But the poorest women actually live less long -2.1%. This means that if you are a poor woman, you actually would have been better off being born in 1920 rather than in 1940! That is a stunning fact. It is the reverse of progress.

The Costs of Obamacare Insurance to YOU.

David Posnett — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 20:30:43 +0000

I have been hearing horror stories about prohibitively expensive Obamacare insurance quotes. So together with my friend Sheila, we logged on to the NY State Official Health Plan Marketplace and pretended to be shopping for insurance right here in Suffolk County.

Note (and this is important) the cost varies depending on where you reside. The different insurance carriers have different quotes of course. And most importantly the cost varies according to your taxable income. Your premium should be reduced (advanced Tax Credit) if your taxable income is below $45,960 for a single individual, or below $94,200 for a family of four.

Here are several scenarios (all of them for a gold plan, annual deductible $600 per person, or $1200 per family) and applicable to Suffolk County residents. The quoted premiums are for the family and represent the cheapest quote. Make sure that your doctor accepts the insurance plan you choose!

Taxable Household income $75,000
2 adults no dependent children: Monthly premium for the family $877 + (depending on Plan). NO CREDITS

Taxable Household income $75,000
2 adults and 2 dependent children: Monthly premium for the family $740 + (depending on Plan). Advanced Tax Credit $137

Taxable Household income $50,000
2 adults and 2 dependent children: Monthly premium for the family $427+ (depending on Plan). Advanced Tax Credit $450

Taxable Household income $25,000
1 adult and no dependent children: Monthly premium $217 + (depending on Plan) – Advanced Tax Credit $221

Taxable Household income $14,000
1 adult and no dependent children: Monthly premium $0 – medicaid

This does not sound too bad at all.

Opting out of Medicare Expansion is costing lives: over 7,100 deaths nation wide!

David Posnett — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 18:35:29 +0000

Interesting study (by a Harvard medical student). It is an estimate of the total numbers of people that will be covered by insurance with/without medicare expansion. They they use prior estimates of how non-coverage translates in to real death rates.

For example

NY (which has opted in):

currently uninsured 2 185 195
projected uninsured with ACA 1 122 130 (49% decline in uninsured)

PA (which has opted out)

currently uninsured 1 520 622
projected uninsured with ACA 1 229 171 (19.2% decline in uninsured)

Bail-out of the Insurance Industry?

David Posnett — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 18:11:21 +0000

The Huffington Post has a nice Wendell Potter article addressing how exactly we “bail out” the insurance industry.

The Pot Is Calling the Kettle Black in This Feigned Obamacare Outrage

Here are the highlights:
… In many cases, insurers refused to sell coverage at any price to prospective customers with preexisting conditions. That’s a big reason why the number of uninsured Americans had reached nearly 50 million when Congress passed the reform law.
So it wasn’t the least bit surprising that the first few million who have signed up for coverage since the exchanges opened on Oct. 1 skew older than many expected. People who have been denied coverage for years are far more motivated to get insurance …

In anticipation of this, drafters of the reform law established a $25-billion risk fund to insulate insurers from big losses during the first three years…

Yes, $25 billion is a lot of money, but it is pocket change compared to the enormous amount of taxpayer dollars that have been flowing to private insurance companies for nearly three decades to keep them in the Medicare Advantage program, which has had the unwavering support of Republicans…

We’re talking a lot of money here. In 2012 alone, the GAO calculated that the federal government spent about $135 billion on the Medicare Advantage program….

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, there was no mention of that, or any reference at all to the Medicare Advantage program, the biggest champion of which are Republicans, in The Weekly Standard‘s “bailout” story last week. If they are sincere in their alarm that Obamacare might reward private insurers with an extra $25 billion between now and the end of 2016, they should be apoplectic about the ongoing bailout known as the Medicare Advantage program.

Is Your Medicare Safe under Obamacare?

David Posnett — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 17:13:50 +0000

50 Million Americans have Medicare (including me) and we have been targeted by scare tactics! So some of us may be worried about the changes under ACA (Obamacare) and what that will mean for our Medicare coverage.

This months AARP bulletin (which I always read) has a great readable article by Marsha Mercer with balanced answers from both sides to key questions such as:

what about cuts to Medicare under the ACA?
my copays are going up…why?
my doctor was dropped by the Medicare Advantage company. Why?
what about drug prescription costs?
is hospital care going to suffer because of decreased payments to hospitals?
does the ACA help Medicare in the long run? Will it still be there is 15 years?

Everyone should get educated on these questions and listen to the pros and the facts!