ACA fun begins on Oct 1 (mines beginning already) (Page 2)

And here is the problem.  There are truly people that cannot get insurance, and those who cannot afford it.  All along the message was we (the people who take care of ourselves, are healthy, and work hard at our jobs to be successful) are already paying for those without insurance.

Now with the "Affordable" Healthcare Act, I will see higher premiums, with high deductible plans, that make me less successful from a financial standpoint.  So you are hurting the responsible (maybe not the best choice of word) people to help those who need help.  

So where is my voice in all this?  Well it comes down to the fact that there are more people living off gov. than working hard to be financially independent.  More people looking for Gov. handouts than getting good paying jobs.  That means, I am in the minority, and I no longer have a voice.  

It's a sad day.

Well, the PPACA is in effect. I tried to set up an account and it told me three times to be patient, that the system was very busy. Fourth time I got to page 3 and it died trying to do a database write.

It's not encouraging to see the errors, but I'm not surprised. Commercial sites don't do much better. Does anyone now if they anticipated a massive number of users trying to sign up on the first day? 

Purely from an IT standpoint this is a massive undertaking to make something like this work out of the gate.  When you throw in the complexities of coordinating the government bid process and whoever the company that ultimately won the contract it adds another layer of complexity.

You're basically taking a start up website that's never had a customer and inundating it with google sized traffic on it's opening day.  I feel sorry for the IT guys in the bubble on this one.  
They were probably hoping the government shut down today.  lol

Yep, technology is awesome when it works and painful when it doesn't.  I am curious how long it's going to take the hackers to find some embarrassing exploits that everyone will parade around.

Believe me, I know. I run a company that does research and scientific software. I know what a headache it is to roll things out. I'm sure you know the adage that everything would work perfectly if it wasn't for the users. Development -> Test ->Production ->Oh sh*t

Do you remember that old superbowl commercial.  I think it was back around 2001 or 2002 for Fedex or UPS.  They showed a bunch of guys in a dot com startup bringing their website live and had a screen with the number of orders.

It clicked over to 1 and they all started jumping up and down and celebrating and then it went to 5, 10, 20, 100 and they kept getting more excited.  Then it went to 1000, 2000, 10,000 and they all got really quiet and started to panic.

I always think of that scene when big launches like this don't go too well.

One of the very first things I learned was never to give a live demonstration of a new system during an important meeting. First time this happened was in 1993, trying to demonstrate the NIH intramural website at their annual research conference. As it happened we didn't think about the fact that you couldn't access the website from the conference center because they were not on our network. So 10 minutes of my boss frantically reconfiguring the server while the Director of NIH waited.

I have health insurance but was curious to see what it would be through the exchange as a small business. Guess I have to wait. My rates have gone up nearly 50% over the last 3 years through BC/BS. It's really a business killer, I can't offer a scientist a part-time job, it's full time with benefits or they go elsewhere.

I did the exact same thing this morning for the same reasons.  I'm curious what the small business plans are going to be.  I'm not sure if they're out or not because I saw something in the local paper saying they were delayed until Nov 15, but our "exchange" is ran by the Feds.

Don't bother trying to follow the link, there is a problem with accessing the data set. There's an error and it's marked
"private." 

To get ready to offer insurance to your employees through the SHOP Marketplace, you can do two things now:

• Review available plan options. Visit this page to see the plans and prices available in your area.
• Fill out a paper application and mail it in, and finish enrollment online in November

Or you can wait until November to handle the entire application process online.

Please know, I am not picking on you, I just want to use your example as an example.

So let me ask this question...  What is the purpose of Insurance?  It is to protect you from unforseen illnesses or injury.  They make money by betting that you will pay more than you use.  In this case, you are a loss for them.  So I can totally see a law that prevents them from dropping a person that they gambled and lost on, but to have them accept a case where they are guaranteed to lose, does not make sense...  In my opinion.

One of the benefits (good things) of OC is that people who can not afford insurance will be able to get it.  And everyone will be able to get insurance even with pre-existing conditions.  But I'm not sure why I should pay more for something I use less?  That is what doesn't add up.

I'm really curious to see what the plans will actually look like.  Even for the currently uninsured, the basic plans appear to have very high deductibles and stiff out of pocket requirements.  So, if you couldn't afford care before how are you going to afford insurance (even with the subsidy) and pay $3k-$5k out of pocket before the insurance kicks in.

On another note my facebook is really starting to light up today with Obama fanboy's dancing around about how everyone gets free healthcare now and the world is awesome.  I posted that my company plan was being canceled due to non ACA compliance and somebody told me I was an idiot and it wasn't being canceled.  I was informed that I need to stop reading republican propaganda sites because nobody's current plans were going away.  I messaged him a picture of the letter, but haven't gotten a response yet.  lol

Oh, the dedication of the uninformed escapes me.

I hear there are fluffy and pink with rainbows and unicorns sprinkled throughout.

The Shop plans are working now, Tony. I downloaded them and will take a look. I had to laugh though, I started scrolling through them online and it randomly stopped at Transylvania, NC. Hope it's not an omen.

Data overload, but I was able to match a plan on the Shop website to existing coverage. It's nearly identical, same provider, same services, deductible, copay, etc. For myself it is $49 a month less.

There are actually 35 plans available in my area. That I didn't expect.

I just looked and they give you the premium, but say nothing about the coverage.  I'm thinking this isn't going to be good because my premium today for my whole family is a little over $500 and the cheapest bronze plan for a couple with 2 children (I have 3) is almost $700.

I must have missed something.  I just got a spreadsheet with fees on it and no coverages listed

Even thought this screwed over a coworker immensely, he has a sense of humor.  Made a joke about riding Lake Mead Natl Rec Area.  The roads will be empty.  Just lift the bike over the barricade and go.

I completely plan to just run the trails at Red Rock Natl Conservation area this weekend.  Park outside and run in.

BTW, I'm not stealing either, because it's free to run/ride there.  Just not drive, and I won't be doing that.

Sorry, I should have been more explicit. I took the plan from the sheet and went to the provider website for the details. It's Independence Blue Cross. If your provider doesn't have that particular plan on their website it will be pretty hard to do the comparison.

ok, that makes more sense.  

Unfortunately my current provider chose to not participate in the exchange so I won't know what's available from them for a while.

I did spot check a close to ours plan on BCBS and it was definitely more, but not a crazy amount more.  Looking at about $200/mo. more per person.  The part that I was worried about was if there would still be HSA (like) plans available with similar deductibles and that appears to be the case.

I will say though, the HDHP that's similar for my family is $895/mo. and then you tack on the $3k deductible before insurance covers anything.  So that's $13,740 out of pocket for a family of 5 before one penny gets covered by the insurance.  This would be approximately $2400 more per year for my family, assuming i switched to the similar BCBS plan.  I don't qualify for any subsidies, so mines all out of pocket.

I also did a hypothetical exercise just for curiosity.  I put it through the calculator that my family only makes $45k in income.  The cheapest bronze plan is $700/mo. and it has a deductible of $4750 (individual) and $9500 (family).  The maximum I would have to pay at that income (per ACA guidelines) would be 9.5% of my annual income or $356/mo and the government would pick up the additional $344.  So if I had no insurance before because it was too expensive, I am now mandated by law to pay $4272 out of pocket next year for insurance and then fork out up to another $9500 before my insurance pays for anything?  I think I'd be forced into just paying the fine and I'm not sure how this is helping the poor any?

Interesting

It's clear that rates and plans vary widely depending on location. IBX has Philly completely locked up so I am not surprised they continued to offer similar plans. I see they just asked to be allowed to restructure as not-for-profit within this region, but as a for-profit outside of this region. Within this region they are a $10 billion company, of which all but $324 million was non-taxable. Their effective tax rate is 2.3%. I could not find compensation data for 2012, but in 2008 the CEO made $2.9 million. What a racket.

Does that deductible apply to office visits and basic preventative health care? If not, that's pretty bad.