Health Care Reform: Five Things to Keep in Mind When Selecting 2014 Coverage

Organizing for Action — the nonprofit offshoot of President Obama's reelection campaign — is running another ad defending the president's health-care law. According to the Washington Post: "The latest ad features a family of three who say they received a $350 rebate last year and are paying $60 less per month for health insurance — all after their insurance company informed them that their premiums would actually be rising by $110 per month." We previously discussed premium rates across the different states in a previous post. As WedMD reports: Depending on who you talk to, calculating savings is "complicated." "Officials in Ohio are warning that rates for people with individual plans will skyrocket by 41%. But critics say the numbers are misleading. In California, officials touted lower-than-expected premiums in its Marketplace, but some people will get socked with big increases." "[I]n the big picture, we do have a good clue now where things stand," says Uwe Reinhardt, PhD, during a webinar sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform. Reinhardt is an economics and health policy professor at Princeton University. According to the Kaiser Health News: "Most policy analysts concur that average premiums will go up for younger, healthier people – and that they will get better benefits than they do now – but that rates may fall for older or sicker Americans, as new rules go into effect Jan. 1. Increases may be offset for many of those buying coverage t...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs