Hooray For Open Enrollment! Thanks Obama!

[charby]

Did she support Obamacare?

Parts of it, definitely not 100%.

[cordex]

I would imagine the overall health of people that can afford health insurance are probably very similar to the overall health of the people that are on employer provided insurance.

Nope.  If the state runs what is essentially an insurance provider of last resort they won't get a random selection of people needing health insurance.  Anyone who expects to have low annual healthcare costs who can get coverage through their work will do that, because for those people having their employer cover the vast majority of your premium is typically way better than having a plan with lower deductibles.  However, for those who expect their out of pocket to be very high - say those facing HIV treatment, ongoing cancer treatment, long-term care for a premature baby with serious birth defects, or in need of a transplant, etc. - such a person would be significantly incentivized to switch to the government offered plan.  For your plan, the most an individual with no coverage by the government would have to pay is about $10,700 a year, right?  If I have hemophilia and I can spend $10,700 to cover ten or twenty times that ... guess what I am going to cheerfully do?  Free money, baby.

What you end up with in such a case is a plan that may well have a number of healthy people covered by it, but has a disproportionate number of people with extremely high medical costs.  That does not end well for your plan, but since I'm not on it I have no issue if you'd like to try it out.

Also, if the high-risk people would get regular preventative health care service, would that decrease their overall health costs. Couple checkups per year vs emergency room procedures.

Yeah, I'm sure that factors into it some, but I don't think the math works out into a slam dunk the way you expect it to.

I'm a bit jaded on how health care and health insurance is run

Me too, brother.  But government isn't the perfect fix that some people seem to think it is.

[charby]

Nope.  If the state runs what is essentially an insurance provider of last resort they won't get a random selection of people needing health insurance.  Anyone who expects to have low annual healthcare costs who can get coverage through their work will do that, because for those people having their employer cover the vast majority of your premium is typically way better than having a plan with lower deductibles.  However, for those who expect their out of pocket to be very high - say those facing HIV treatment, ongoing cancer treatment, long-term care for a premature baby with serious birth defects, or in need of a transplant, etc. - such a person would be significantly incentivized to switch to the government offered plan.  For your plan, the most an individual with no coverage by the government would have to pay is about $10,700 a year, right?  If I have hemophilia and I can spend $10,700 to cover ten or twenty times that ... guess what I am going to cheerfully do?  Free money, baby.

What I have seen and maybe it is just what I have experienced is that when individuals are having health situations like you have described, they aren't working anymore (many times because they can't) and are already on medicaid/medicare.

For some clarification, I am talking about people that can still work, or in Ben's situation where they were able to retire early but not eligible for Medicare. The really health compromised people are going to be on the government dole under the current system.

[cordex]

What I have seen and maybe it is just what I have experienced is that when individuals are having health situations like you have described, they aren't working anymore (many times because they can't) and are already on medicaid/medicare.

For some clarification, I am talking about people that can still work, or in Ben's situation where they were able to retire early but not eligible for Medicare. The really health compromised people are going to be on the government dole under the current system.

Wherever you think the line needs to be drawn, the people who are going to jump ship to the state plan are going to be the ones for whom it makes financial sense to pay $10,700 a year out of pocket because they are currently paying more than that on their employer plan.  Even if you think you can set aside the most extreme cases, you're still going to be collecting mostly the expensive people, not a random sample.

My health plan sucks and pays for almost nothing except for basic annual visits.  My out of pocket maximum is $10,000 for my family, which is also my deductible and everything goes toward that deductible.  But my employer also covers a significant portion of my premium and my family uses very little in the way of healthcare.  Barring significant health issues I'm better served staying on my employer's plan despite your plan being way, way, way better.

So again, the state or feds acting as insurance of last resort means that they'll collect a disproportionate number of high cost subscribers.  The only way that won't negatively impact your plan in either cost or reduced benefits is if the taxpayer has to subsidize it.

[K Frame]

My employer just started open enrollment for the upcoming year.

I need to check in and see what's changed.