TexasCHLforum.com

TLE2 wrote:For employers with a majority of blue collar workers, the exchanges seem to be popular. Our company is still keeping it plan intact for 2014, but the future may change.

The Oklahoma exchange is up today 10/1. The deductibles and prices are not low.

I'm a Heath actuary. Glad I'm retiring in a few months.

cb1000rider wrote:

sjfcontrol wrote: Simply not true. The Texas Health Insurance Pool is (was) available for those that couldn't otherwise qualify due to preexisting conditions. My wife had cancer, and was covered under the pool until she turned 65 and medicare took over. Expensive? Yes. High Deductibles? Yes. But it was insurance and was available.

I stand corrected on this... And a few other things that my fellow members have helped to educate me with.
However, a Texas Health Insurance pool that candidates coverage of pre-existing conditions, but doesn't limit premiums is essentially the same as not insuring them. Have a history of cancer? That'll be $10k/month in premiums. Apparently Obamacare makes it so that you can't exclude the condition and you can't charge more for it.. Which is why they're pushing young (healthy) people to get in the pools and balance out.

Again, I'll wait and see.. It's the statistical cost/coverage data that I want across the board. If it's worse, I'll work beside you to get rid of it...

The Annoyed Man wrote:Well, I'm just going to pay the $95.00 fine to support the rest of you guys on the exchanges, because that's what I can afford. My insurance guy has assured me that nobody in Texas will know the exchange rates until 10/1 because the rates have not been made public yet. But even if the rates that Kythas quotes are accurate, I still can't afford them. So the net effect of this legislation for people like Kythas is that they will pay a little bit more, but they will still (if Obama is to be believed) get adequate coverage for the price; while the net effect for people like me is that we get to support the system through our fines, without being able to afford the system's "benefits."

Kythas wrote:So I went through the exchange website this morning. Here's what I got.

A high-deductible plan with a Health Savings Account. The deductible is $2,000 individual/$4,000 family, which is double the deductible of my old BCBS insurance plan. Everything is paid 80/20 after the deductible is met, which is the same as my old BCBS plan.

I opted for dental and vision coverage for my wife and myself. My son is only 9 days old so will not need dental or vision this year.

I opted out of short and long term disability. The monthly premiums for those don't make much sense at all (the STD was $39/mo premium to only pay a benefit of $100/mo if used).

All in all, I'm losing the short and long term disability insurance which my company used to pay for, and am having my annual deductible doubled. The medical/dental/vision plan I chose has a total annual premium of $21,516. That includes the $6,250 annual HSA contribution I'm making. All this is paid for with pre-tax dollars.

My employer will be contributing $11,379 per year for my health insurance, leaving my portion of the total cost at $10,137.96. Again, this DOES include the amount I'm contributing to the HSA, which is all my money. Without the HSA contribution, my total share of the insurance premium itself is $3,687.96 for the year.

I was paying $322/mo for insurance premiums for my wife and myself. Since we just had our baby, this would have gone up when I switched from Employee/Spouse to Employee/Family, anyway. We were also told by BCBS that premiums would increase 20-35% this coming plan year if we stayed with them, which is why my company chose to use the exchange.

I've been paying $250/mo into a Flex Spending Account.

I will now be paying $307.33/mo for insurance premiums for my entire family.

I will be paying $537.50/mo into a Health Savings Account to cover my deductible.

All in all, I'm not unhappy with it. I will be paying more overall out of pocket, but not an exorbitant amount. My total monthly cost will go from $572.00 to $844.83. Again, to be perfectly honest, my premium would have gone up anyway since I would have switched to cover my entire family rather than just my wife and myself. This cost is probably in line with the extra person on the policy and what the annual increase would have been with BCBS.