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A comment on Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible Health Plans. Parent comment

Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by mdorazio on Friday May 03, 2019 @12:35PM (#19819873)
The parent comment is exaggerated, but I think the point is that prior to ACA, employer-provided plans tended to be cheaper and have lower deductibles largely because insurance companies were able to drop or deny coverage whenever they felt like it for individual plans to keep their margins up. While logically true, this is roughly equivalent to hearing from an old coworker that South Africa was a great place to be white under apartheid...

I think it's also worth exploring how much of the difference in financial cost of health insurance plans is due to time + annual overall increases in healthcare cost in the US. ACA was passed 9 years ago. Even under the previous 9 year annual percentage increase averages, you would expect healthcare costs to be at least 20% more expensive than they were in 2010, regardless of ACA.

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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by WalterSear on Friday May 03, 2019 @12:43PM (#19819970)
It's more extreme than your example. The parent is ignoring the fact his great healthcare experience is predicated on them being able to drop him the moment they could, when his illness became too expensive.

Ending pre-existing conditions was the game changer in the AMA. Treating people is obviously more expensive than not treating them.

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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by mrosett on Friday May 03, 2019 @12:54PM (#19820065)
That's just not how it worked with employer insurance. Perhaps they could drop your whole company, but the insurer couldn't unilaterally cancel a single employee's plan.
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by Someone1234 on Friday May 03, 2019 @01:25PM (#19820328)
I know someone who pre-ACA had employer insurance who was dropped by that insurance after they got skin cancer. The official reason was lying during the application process (10+ years earlier).

They forgot to list childhood Asthma on their application form ten years earlier.

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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by mrosett on Friday May 03, 2019 @02:27PM (#19820953)
Would the ACA prevent that kind of scam? I genuinely don't know.
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by WalterSear on Friday May 03, 2019 @02:47PM (#19821141)
The incentive is gone, since preexisting conditions are no longer a disqualification.
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by dsfyu404ed on Friday May 03, 2019 @03:22PM (#19821430)
The incentive is still very much there. You just can't use a preexisting condition as your excuse anymore.
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by WalterSear on Friday May 03, 2019 @06:45PM (#19822925)
I would argue that the incentive was implicit and fundamental to the nature of the business, because it provided agents with a method to pick and choose their clients.

By inducing lapses in insurance coverage, insurance companies were able to convert illnesses under active treatment into preexisting conditions.

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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by Someone1234 on Friday May 03, 2019 @03:18PM (#19821397)
You aren't required to complete an application form when you sign up anymore, so they don't even ask you medical questions.
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by WalterSear on Friday May 03, 2019 @02:49PM (#19821163)
There were plenty of cases where they would raise an employer's premiums and let them know why, and sick people lost their jobs and their insurance.
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by FireBeyond on Friday May 03, 2019 @04:38PM (#19822050)
Witness all sorts of horrible behavior, like employers saying "Sorry, all, no raises this year, because one of your coworkers was using so much of our health insurance pool that they raised our rates!"
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by WalterSear on Friday May 03, 2019 @01:24PM (#19820311)
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140918/NEWS03/1409...
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by pnutjam on Friday May 03, 2019 @01:20PM (#19820277)
No, but sick individuals, or those with sick family members are lousy employees... wink... wink..
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by tptacek on Friday May 03, 2019 @12:45PM (#19819988)
Yes: if you go back in time, health care costs go down, because they've been rising rapidly over the past 20 years. But the only thing that happens at the point in time when the ACA passed is that the rate of growth in cost falls.
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by ameister14 on Friday May 03, 2019 @02:02PM (#19820709)
That's not really true, though. Costs as a % of GDP went down from '05-06 and went up slightly from '06-07.

In real numbers, in 2008-2009, the increase in overall cost per year was actually lower than in 2014-2015, when the exchanges opened.

You're right that the rate of growth in Medicare cost fell after the ACA passed, but that's much more specific than overall cost delta.

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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by JamesBarney on Friday May 03, 2019 @06:30PM (#19822831)
Something very relevant happened in 2008-2009.
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Re:Employees Start to Feel the Squeeze of High-Deductible He... by tptacek on Friday May 03, 2019 @07:11PM (#19823070)
It also impacted prices all the way into 2012, by moving people out of full-time employment and onto COBRA, and by reducing the number of young people on health insurance plans.
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