[NA] Health Insurance. US vs. Elsewhere

172andyou said:
Sorry you guys saw increases. The world is an imperfect place. If you look at health care as a whole, you'll find that insurance costs moderated during ACA (note that I said "during" not "because of", because the world is also a complicated place). In any case, this is why it's important to not accept anecdotes as being truth. Only by looking at the big picture can you make a credible claim that ACA caused prices to go up, and in this case, the data doesn't support that position.

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Expenditures =/= premiums
 
NHWannabe said:
Expenditures =/= premiums
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Yeah theres either a gross misunderstanding of the data, or blantant misdirection.

From Forbes:

It turns out that across the board, for all ages and family sizes, for HMO, PPO, and POS plans, premium increases averaged about 60 percent from 2013, the last year before ACA reforms took effect, to 2017. In same length of time preceding that, all groups experienced premium increases of less than 10 percent, and most age groups actually experienced premium decreases, on average.
 
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Jeff Oslick said:
H

It fundamentally comes to that you can never fairly assume that the consumer of medical services or purchaser of medical insurance is a well informed consumer, so a "free market" assumption is always going to be a poor starting point to assume. Most of us, as pilots, are used to complex systems and needing to understand lots of fine print. That isn't how the average Joe or Jane lives their lives.

My other personal pet-peeve with our current system is that there are huge administrative and time costs that are not captured by any of the normal metrics. I'm referring to: 1) the vast resources private companies and governments have to pour into administering health plans for their employees; and 2) the huge amount of time both the insured and uninsured need to spend to pay medical bills and sort through explanation-of-benefits to ensure they aren't getting screwed over by the provider or their insurance company. Virtually all of this goes away under a single-payer system (unless an employer chooses to offer a supplemental plan, as would likely be allowed). Will there still be battles over coverage with a government-paid system? Of course, but this happens regularly with private insurance now, and an "independent" ombudsman program could help to address that concern.
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not true. After dealing with Medicare and TriCare with my parents, you still need to scrutinize the EOBs and understand them. We are still dealing with a provider and Medicare that are trying to bill after 18 months. It won’t go away - the charges never should have paid.
 
Weird - free for me in Firefox. But here's a PDF for you all.
 

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172andyou said:
Sorry you guys saw increases. The world is an imperfect place. If you look at health care as a whole, you'll find that insurance costs moderated during ACA (note that I said "during" not "because of", because the world is also a complicated place). In any case, this is why it's important to not accept anecdotes as being truth. Only by looking at the big picture can you make a credible claim that ACA caused prices to go up, and in this case, the data doesn't support that position.
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Yeah, no suprise. When people used to have $500 deductibles, now they have 2500 or 6k deductibles. People now just put off stuff until it absolutely has to be done. As you notice in that snazzy graph, after a plateau, cost continued its growth unabated.
 
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