Tag / Obamacare

by Hoosier Econ

Premium Costs Before and After Obamacare

In analysis published this week, the website HealthPocket.com compared the average premiums people paid in 2013, before Obamacare plans went on sale, to 2014 plan prices. HealthPocket looked at premiums paid by non-smoking men and women, ages 23, 30 and 63, in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

“HealthPocket found that the average health insurance premium increased by double digits for each group examined, though some groups saw a much steeper increase than others,” the report said.

For 23-year-old non-smoking men, the average premium for all plans jumped 78 percent in 2014, the report said. Women of the same age saw a 45-percent hike.

For 30-year-olds, the increases were 73 percent for men and 35 percent for women. Only the 63-year-old age group saw bigger price hikes for women, with females paying 37.5 percent more for insurance on average in 2014, and men paying an average of nearly 23 percent more.

Read the rest at CNBC

by Hoosier Econ

Walmart Competing Against Doctor Offices

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Walmart is now opening clinics to compete in the ever changing healthcare landscape. This from Marketwatch:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pushed down prices for some generic prescription drugs to just $4 eight years ago, setting a new industry standard. Now it is trying to do the same for seeing a doctor.

On Friday, a Walmart Care Clinic opened in Dalton, Ga., six months after Walmart U.S., the retailer’s biggest unit, entered the business of providing primary health care. It now operates a dozen clinics in rural Texas, South Carolina and Georgia and has increased its target for openings this year to 17.

Here is a list of pricing for services offered:

An office visit costs $40, which Walmart U.S. says is about half the industry standard, and just $4 for Walmart U.S. employees and family members with the company’s insurance. A pregnancy test costs just $3, and a cholesterol test $8. A typical retail clinic offers acute care only. But a Walmart Care Clinic also treats chronic conditions such as diabetes. (Walmart U.S. also leases space in its stores to 94 clinics owned by others that set their own pricing.)

by Hoosier Econ

Doctors Take on Obamacare

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Ran across this piece at Economic Policy Journal. Disturbing how bogged down our doctors will get in the future.

Dr. Mark Sklar writes:

The push to use electronic medical records has had more than financial costs. Although it is convenient to have patient records accessible on the Internet, the data processing involved has been extremely time consuming—a sentiment echoed by most of my colleagues. To save time, I was advised by a consultant to enter data into the electronic record during the office visit. When I tried this I found that typing in the data was disruptive to the patient visit. My eyes were focused on the keyboard and the lack of direct contact kept patients from opening up and discussing their medical and personal problems. I soon returned to my old method of dictating notes and pasting a print-out of the dictation into the electronic record.

Yet to avoid future financial penalties from Medicare, I must demonstrate “meaningful use” of the electronic record. This involves documenting that I covered a checklist of items during the office visit, so I spend 90 minutes each day entering mostly meaningless data. This is time better spent calling patients to answer questions or keeping updated with the medical literature…

To prevent physicians from prescribing more costly medications and tests on patients, insurers are increasingly requiring physicians to obtain pre-authorizations. This involves calling a telephone number, often being rerouted several times and then waiting on hold for a representative. The process is demeaning and can take 30-45 minutes…

To avoid Medicare penalties, I also must participate in the Physician Quality Reporting System program. Initially, this involved choosing three codes during the patient visit to reflect quality of care, such as blood pressure or blood-sugar control, and reporting them to Medicare. In 2015, the requirement will increase to nine codes.

Coming down the pike, but thankfully postponed from the October 2014 deadline, is something called ICD-10. This is a newer system that will contain about 70,000 medical diagnostic codes used for billing insurance. The present ICD-9 system has about 15,000 codes. The Physician Quality Reporting System and ICD-10 requirements are intended to benefit population research, but the effect is to turn physicians into adjuncts of the Census Bureau who spend time searching for codes—and to further decrease the amount of direct contact with patients.

The practice of medicine in the current environment is unsustainable. The multiple bureaucratic distractions in my day consume so much time that I have to give up what little personal time I have in the morning, evening and on weekends if I want to continue to provide excellent care during office hours.

by Hoosier Econ

H&R Block: Yeah Taxes Will Get More Complicated Because of Obamacare

H&R Block confirmed what many predicted would happen with the new health care law enacted 4 years ago: make taxes even more complicated.

Speaking on H&R Block’s quarterly earnings conference call, CEO William Cobb said that the company was already taking steps to train its tax preparers based on the draft forms that the Internal Revenue Service has released to comply with Obamacare.

“As expected, the forms are very detailed and can present significant complexity, depending on a filer’s coverage status during the year, income level, and household composition,” Cobb said. “Depending on their situation, there are instances where filers may need to file multiple new tax forms and complete additional worksheets.”

And he wasn’t he wasn’t finished…

“Depending on the type of exemption, the process to claim it could be quite cumbersome and time consuming,” Cobb said.

by Hoosier Econ

Indiana “Obamacare” Prices To Rise by Double Digits

Prescription drugs, new federal rules and insurer fees will help drive up healthcare premium costs related to Obamacare “Silver Plans” in Indiana by 16%. Bloomberg Business fills a rather short article with lots of good financial nuggets for readers to absorb. Bloomberg broke down the pricing.

How insurers set prices: Cost of claims, benefit changes, rising prices, risk pools, provider networks, geography, reinsurance, taxes and fees, profit and risk load.

With all that calculated, this is what they got for various states:

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by Hoosier Econ

Another Indiana School District Battling Obamacare Regulations

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More developments with Indiana school districts dealing with countless rules/regulations related to Obamacare. This story comes out of North Spencer County School Corporation. Superintendent Dan Scherry and the school board recently learned from a trade association that Obamacare would make him legally liable if fines are incurred. 

Scherry said the law states an individual could be held responsible for fines incurred for an employee working full-time that isn’t offered health insurance. To give individual employees relief from that provision of the law, the North Spencer school board on Monday discussed and approved a Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Hold Harmless Resolution.

 

That resolution, which Scherry said was developed by the Indiana School Board Association, basically absolves administrators or other individuals from personal liability for those fines and makes the school corporation responsible.

 

 

And how much would have someone in like Mr. Scherry faced if the rule wasn’t found and dealt with? What is the process for something like this in order for a fine to happen?

“For us, it could be a $300,000 or $400,000 fine, so you’re talking about changing lives there,” said Mr. Scherry. If an employee is working more than 30 hours a week and not covered by health insurance, Scherry explained they could make a complaint with the insurance exchange through the government, then the government could impose a fine saying the business or school district didn’t follow the law. Without this resolution, Scherry said the fine could haunt individual people, but after it is passed by school boards the school corporation would be responsible.

With school districts already facing massive budget tightening as is, this new fine process will be the new normal for local taxpayers. Even though the school districts are protecting employees from not getting fined, now the taxpayer is on the hook. Go ahead and expect school corporation budgets to be cutting more from teaching areas so they can stash a “rainy day” fund for Obamacare fines.

Here is a link to the rest of the story.

I think I will just let Mr. Scherry sum up what this bill is doing to various aspects of our economy:

“It’s just a mess,”

by Hoosier Econ

Farm Bill & Indiana Schools Facing Obamacare “Uncertainty”

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Indiana Senator Joe Donnelly was recently on the floor of the Senate pleading for the passage of the new ten year farm bill currently up for debate. He did the basic verbal judo political speak in saying the bill would help “Hoosier Farmers”. Senator Donnelly is very much celebrated as a moderate thinker by the political writers at the Indianapolis Star. I personally have challenged a few of their writers in what direction he would choose once in the Senate and get the usual “Bipartisanship” line and that is about it. I am not seeing anything as of right now from the Indianapolis Star on this issue but if they write about his statements on the proposed farm bill, it will be very nuanced without much substance.

The current Farm Bill of 2013 will most likely pass the Senate and head to the House. The farm bill is anything but a farm bill. Here is small paragraph from RedState.com: 

Today, the Senate will invoke cloture on the 5-year farm bill, S. 954.  The 1150-page Senate bill costs $955 billion over 10 years and creates a new shallow loss program covering up to 90% of a farmer’s income – on the taxpayer dime.  Roughly 80% of the cost is related to food stamps.  For good measure, this bill contains sugar subsidies, biofuels subsidies, and conservation programs.  This mega-bill was rushed through the committee process and has only been subject to four amendments on the floor. 

Farm bills of this magnitude need to be stopped and absolutely broken down for separate votes. On top of that, when a Senator like Joe Donnelly steps to the microphone to express support for this bill, just be honest and say what the bill is.  Here is the link to his floor speech and it says nothing about what the bill really is intended to support.

One more piece to “Farm Bills”, they hardly ever help a bunch of farmers. Face the Facts USA has an excellent breakdown of the most previous data of the last farm bill. They added a nice slideshow for their data breakdown. Here is the link for their article but will post one small piece:

The most recent Farm Bill shows the bulk of its $96.2 billion cost went elsewhere. $77.6 billion in 2011 went to the food stamp program known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Just $13.44 billion went to programs for farmers.

Switching topics, more and more financial decisions are not only being made by businesses in how to adopt the coming Obamacare guidelines but local municipalities are as well. The new unspoken effects are hitting public schools. Just recently, my high school I attended released a statement saying part of the cuts they needed to make was from uncertainty with costs pertaining to the healthcare law. Now more news is coming out from other Indiana schools with what they have to do to be able to afford the law. This comes from Hancock County, Indiana:

Part-time employees could see their hours cut or changed under new federal regulations related to the Affordable Care Act. Though portions of the Affordable Care Act have been phasing in since its adoption in 2010, the new legislation grows teeth Jan. 1 and Hancock County governments, businesses and school districts are taking notice. Large employers who have part-time staff working between 30 and 40 hours a week, for example, will be required to provide health insurance. Failure to provide the coverage for 95 percent of the employer’s workforce could result in significant monetary penalties from the federal government.

 

Even the lawyers hired to help sort out the coming law are uncertain:

And while the law was designed to provide more Americans with affordable health care, there’s plenty of uncertainty surrounding the new regulations. “There’s mass uncertainty,” said Jim Matthews, attorney with Bose McKinney and Evans in Indianapolis who has been advising clients on the act. “There are so many surprises in this law, and they just keep coming and coming.”

The Eastern Hancock School Board had to cut non-contract employee hours from 30-40 to 29 hours. Not only is it the school district but the county itself:

The Hancock County Commissioners budgeted for a 20 percent increase in health insurance costs for 2014, still not knowing the full impact of the Affordable Care Act. Details of the 2014 budget will be worked out in the next few months, and one discussion point will be whether to cut the hours of some part-time employees or make them full-time. 

“Normally, you would benefit from two part-time positions rather than a full-time position,” Commissioner Brad Armstrong said. “But if your part-time position is going to get over 30 hours, then it incurs the cost in benefits, there’s really no savings in doing that.”

Many of the county’s part-time employees are in the community corrections department, said Mary Bowmer, payroll administrator. Adding health insurance for a single employee will come at a cost of more than $6,600 for the county.

The full article is in this link. This is just a microcosm of what is too come for the entire nation. Municipalities are struggling massively from tight budgets, this will only confuse the budget makers a few more years as this law plays out.

 

 

by Hoosier Econ

Early Indicator of “Obamacare”

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When Congress passed another healthcare plan designed to “help” the American people it had widespread implications. The bill has thousands of pages of not just law, but also regulations written after the bill was passed.

One of the programs within the bill for the HHS(Health & Human Services) agency to begin implementing right away was a “High Risk Pool” for people with already pre-existing conditions. I have been following this program for awhile now in the press. Here is the short version of what the program was created to do. Five Billion dollars was set aside to assist people with already pre-existing conditions until the full bill was implemented. Projections were to sign up anywhere from 350,000-500,000 people. Now the stats are out and should give many pause in seeing how costs of the total health care program will affect the United States government overall spending of this bill down the road.

Investors.com reported on April 10,2013:

ObamaCare funded the PCIP with $5 billion to cover patients with pre-existing conditions from 2010 to 2014. Less than a third of the people HHS projected would enroll in the plan actually signed up for the coverage. Yet despite the low enrollment, the plan is broke. In fact, it started running out of money at the beginning of this year, which means it busted its budget a full year ahead of projections. In a 2012 report, HHS conceded that it had miscalculated (though not until page 11 of its 15-page report): “On average, the PCIP program has experienced claims costs 2.5 times higher than anticipated.”

So what were the estimated numbers in 2010 for this one small program within the bigger healthcare plan? Here is a breakdown from the Heritage Foundation:

In 2010, the Obama Administration estimated that 375,000 people would enroll in the PCIP. But as of January 2013, over two-and-a-half years since the plan began, only 107,139 were enrolled—less than 29 percent of original projections.

Not only did costs skyrocket, but major changes to the program recipients as well:

In addition to suspending enrollment, CMS made major benefit adjustments in an effort to control program costs—mainly by increasing enrollee cost-sharing requirements. These changes included the consolidation of three plan options into one, increased co-insurance, and increased maximums for out-of-pocket costs (a 56 percent increase for in-network services and a 42 percent increase for out-of-network services).

This is not unexpected. History is filled with facts to teach us present day Americans about the fallacy of “Government Healthcare Programs” but we always choose the divine providence of “The Government” when it comes to social experiments. In the same article quoted above, they also had this historical data to show us the coming cost explosion from previous healthcare experiments:

In 1965, the Johnson administration figured Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. Its actual cost was $110 billion. Now it’s almost $600 billion and climbing.

Washingtontimes.com had these historical numbers on November 18,2009:

In 1965, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance program of Medicare – the federal health care program for the elderly and disabled – would cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual cost that year was $67 billion. In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee said the entire Medicare program would cost $12 billion in 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billion.

Once 2014 kicks in which is full implementation of the law itself, we unfortunately will be on the side of waiting to see costs explode. Not only that aspect, but HHS will probably start changing rules once people have signed contracts for health insurance. Constantly changing rules is part of having “Centrally Planned” programs by the government.

Like I said, we unfortunately will have to wait and see.