The funny part is the Bronze Plan is actually
supposed to be "affordable."
For a 40-year-old individual in 2016, the cost of this care would be $3,479 in premiums plus the
deductible before the first benefit could be covered – a total of
$9,210 out of pocket. Even if subsidies pared premiums all the way down
to Barack Obama’s promised $75 per month, it would still require the
consumer to spend over $6600 for anything but a basic wellness check, a
service that would cost a few hundred dollars at most, before having the
first benefit covered. And that situation will only get worse in 2017,
as insurers use increases in deductibles to buffer the premium hikes
that have already been signaled.
The Bronze Plan is a strait rip-off because almost no person that has to buy that plan can afford it. It is $200 a month (which is a car payment) and then they have drop up to another $6Gs for doing anything other than a wellness check. Most people do not even
have nearly that amount saved up if you go by nationwide statistics. I guess that is why young people are choosing a kind of insurance I have never heard of called
fixed-benefit indemnity plans. Although the White House wants to kill even that dead.
The White House hasn’t quite gotten that memo. HHS has floated a new attempt to drive fixed-benefit plans out of the market, this time by forcing insurers to pay the exact same dollar amount
for any payable event. In other words, whatever payment the insurer
provides for a day in the hospital would have to equal what they pay for
a doctor visit, and vice-versa.
In other words they want to turn these plans into the equivalent of that crappy Bronze Plan mentioned above. I agree with Bill Clinton that this really is the "craziest system."
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