Posted on 04/14/2014 6:21:26 PM PDT by Nachum
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) lowered the projected cost of ObamaCare's health insurance benefits Monday by $104 billion over 10 years.
The law's insurance coverage provisions will now cost close to $1.4 trillion between 2015 and 2024, about $100 billion less than previously estimated, the CBO said.
What is driving the lowered estimate? According to the report released by CBO, it has primarily to do with lower-than-expected premiums for exchange policies. So, good news for the Obama administration? Not so fast. Per CBO:
A crucial factor in the current revision was an analysis of the characteristics of plans offered through the exchanges in 2014. Previously, CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxation] had expected that those plans’ characteristics would closely resemble the characteristics of employment-based plans throughout the projection period. However, the plans being offered through the exchanges this year appear to have, in general, lower payment rates for providers, narrower networks of providers, and tighter management of their subscribers’ use of health care than employment-based plans do.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
The list, Ping
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A billion here, a billion there - piff!
Can anyone believe any of the numbers the government produces about anything? Really...being dishonest appears to be a requirement to be a “public servant”.
> “However, the plans being offered through the exchanges this year appear to have, in general, lower payment rates for providers, narrower networks of providers, and tighter management of their subscribers’ use of health care than employment-based plans do.”
In other words, crappy healthcare with scarce doctors and coverage on paper but not in practice.
>> However, the plans being offered through the exchanges this year appear to have, in general, lower payment rates for providers, narrower networks of providers, and tighter management of their subscribers’ use of health care than employment-based plans do.
Decreased reimbursement
Decreased choice
Decreased service
So if you live in New Hampshire more than one third of all the doctors and hospitals aren't covered at all by your Obamacare policy, and if you need really serious medical care, like what they offer at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, or Children's Hospital, or Mass General Hospital you are out of luck. At those places you are "uninsured".
And if you happen to have kids in school out of state, or live and work part time in another state you have no insurance at all for the providers there.
Somehow the idea of cutting health insurance costs by simply not covering needed medical care never got publicized by the Democrats who voted for Obamacare.
Although what we are seeing may be isolated cases, one of my docs has two patients who have BC exchange policies and the amount paid to the doc is 8 percent more than the current contract rate paid for the same procedure for patients who have insurance through their employer.
We did receive notification that the contract rates for people covered under group insurance through their employer will be going down about 5 percent on July 1. This will make the gap between employer group insurance and exchange policies even higher.
Usually when BC rates for groups go down, Medicare rates go up. Will be interesting to see if that happens for Medicare this time.
it will all come crashing down by August,,hey,isnt that when someone of importance goes on a 20 million dollar vacation?
Didn’t the ACA just increase 2015 network adequacy 50%? That should raise premiums.
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