Obama Health Care
Healthcare in the United States has seen a lot of changes in the past few years, with prices for coverage fluctuating dramatically and the very platform for healthcare hanging in the political balance. This issue comes at a time when our country is still recovering from a devastating economic recession, and financial uncertainty and fickle premium costs are prodding many Californians to look for alternatives to health care coverage.
Many questions remain unclear to the average buyer. Are there penalties for not having health insurance? Is health insurance a requirement in California? If I can’t afford health insurance in California, or I don’t want to pay for health insurance, what are my options?
In this article, we will explain the risks of not having health insurance in California and other places, as well as how to better understand the healthcare system so that you won’t have to go without it.
Despite the number of Americans without health insurance dropping from 44 million to...
by John Hansen
Obamacare rates are going up in 2017. Most states will have rate increases in the double digits. According to leading General Agency / FMO, Health Family Insurance, they have seen nothing in the single digits across the country with regard to average rate increases by state.
Some carriers are raising rates much more than 20%. Blue cross in Texas will have an almost 55% rate increase across the state in 2017 for Obamacare plans. Humana in Michigan will have a price increase of over 50% next year.
For more information on the ACA plan options and rate levels, see Obamacare Plans and Prices.
The 3 R’s, Risk Adjustment, Reinsurance and Risk Corridors, were put in place to reduce risk for health insurance carriers. However, some changes are happening to Obamacare in 2017; 2 of the 3 R’s are going away. This alone is causing medical plans to file for rate increases.
Also, carriers are just now beginning to get a clearer picture of the risk associated with the pool of Health Care...
by Jessica Howland
A small business client recently called asking for help in getting an employee health insurance. It was discovered that this employee had unknowingly been without coverage for 8 months. Months earlier there had been an internal company error in which the employee was never enrolled on the group health plan. In reaching out to us as their health insurance agency, the company was doing all they could to rectify the mistake.
Human mistakes are a part of life, and happen to the best of us. I think we would all agree with that. It didn’t seem right that the employee would need to suffer for a legitimate HR error which exposes them to large health and financial risks. Unfortunately, the insurance carrier of the group policy was not able to make exceptions based on their guidelines, and said the employee would need to wait until the company’s next open enrollment to get group coverage. Even though this wasn’t good news, I was pretty confident with the Affordable Care Ac...
How the ACA May Force Spouses and Children into Un-Affordable Health Care
By John Hansen
The Affordable Care Act insures “affordable” health insurance for employees, but not necessarily for the employees’ spouses and children. This doughnut hole in Obamacare is commonly referred to as “The Dependent Gap”.
The Problem of “The Dependent Gap”
Brokers at recent Covered California Trainings across California have been asking this question: What about the spouses and children? Here’s the problem. If employees are offered “affordable coverage”, meaning coverage that costs them less than 9.5% of their income, then these employees are ineligible to get a tax credit if they decide to purchase individual coverage from Covered California. That’s not surprising, but what is shocking to many Californians is that these employees’ spouses and children are also ineligible to get a tax credit for coverage purchased from an plan through Obama Care California.
The All Too Common Wors...