Did You Have Health Insurance Prior to Signing Up With an Exchange?

[AllDone]

So what you are saying is that if the government gives you a some money and labels it ”income tax break" that's good, but if they label it "something else", that's bad? To me, since money is fungible, it's the same thing.

You are correct, though, that Megacorp pays for your insurance in pre-tax dollars (most companies do a little accounting trick which allows you to pay your share indirectly in pre-tax dollars too). It's not clear to me why you think that break should not be extended to some (or all!) working and retired people in the individual market.* I do agree with you that everyone is entitled to equal treatment, but because of the way we pay taxes in different buckets with labels like "FICA", "sales", and "income", it wouldn't be fair to give a break only to people with most of their taxes in the "income" bucket (aka rich people) and not the people who pay most of their taxes in the other buckets. If it makes you feel better, except for the very poor and the very rich who both pay a lower percentage of taxes, those of us in the working-poor to working-rich income categories pay the same percentage in total taxes.


* Throughout my working life I always seemed to have a colleague or two whose work habits strongly resembled a retired person.

 

[REWahoo]

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[nvestysly]

Interesting Results

The poll has been open for 12 days and the votes so far are 58 YES and 4 NO.

Interesting results. I don't know what it means and it probably doesn't matter. The YES votes are coming in at 14.5:1 over the NO. Thank you to all those who participated in the poll.

I'd like to see a more scientific analysis of the question... "Who is signing up on the Exchange(s)?"

I hear lots of numbers thrown around in the media and I'm not sure what to make of the "facts." If E-R.org is any indication (and I realize it may not be) many of those who are signing up on the exchange(s) already had insurance. So what's happening with the millions of previously uninsured?

 

[Calico]

......If E-R.org is any indication (and I realize it may not be) many of those who are signing up on the exchange(s) already had insurance......

I think you would have to look far and wide to find a group that is less representative of the population as a whole than the members of E-R.org. The members of this forum, generally speaking, are folks who plan for all contingencies in life, including health care. The millions of previously and/or currently uninsured folks are not represented here. Just my two cents.

ETA: I'm not saying the millions of uninsured folks were poor planners - I understand that there are multiple reasons why folks could not get or afford health insurance. I'm just saying that ER folks as a general rule have taken health insurance costs into consideration and have been in a position to financially afford it.

 

[M Paquette]

The poll has been open for 12 days and the votes so far are 58 YES and 4 NO.

Interesting results. I don't know what it means and it probably doesn't matter. The YES votes are coming in at 14.5:1 over the NO. Thank you to all those who participated in the poll.

I'd like to note that while I had insurance when I signed up through an ACA web site, that policy ended at 11:59 PM Dec 31, 2013, and was not being renewed by the insurer. So, while I had insurance, if I had not signed up for an ACA plan, I would have lost insurance.

If non-ACA plans were available to me, they would certainly have included riders to avoid covering certain significant issues.

 

[audreyh1]

Same here - in the sense that the type of insurance I had (state run risk pool) was rendered obsolete by the new law.

If a risk pool had not been available to me, I may only have had insurance that had a rider against a very minor pre-existing condition, but still worried that if I developed any other condition I would have been subject to the insurance company putting a lot of energy into figuring out how to deny me.