Open enrollment for Obamacare has already begun and to be
insured by January 1, sign ups must be completed by December 15. Grand County has cut its uninsured numbers in
half and the Colorado state run exchange is ranked as one of the four best run
sites in the US for signing up for
insurance. The exchange is where you can compare policies and buy private health insurance, and it provides
a method to administer subsidies to make insurance affordable based on an
individual’s or family’s income level. This is not the same sign up site as the one
that got so much bad publicity last year. That was the federal site to be used
by states that did not set up their own exchanges. Our Colorado state site had a relatively
smooth rollout. The site is www.connectforhealthco.com or call 855 752 6749 for free in person help.
Consumer Reports has a site that may help you understand the law at https://tools.healthlawhelper.org
If you do not get
health insurance from your employer or parents and you are not already covered
by Medicare or Medicaid or the exchange, this is the year that the penalties
for those not having insurance become significant.
Some in Congress want
to take affordable health insurance away by repealing the entire law. It will
not happen. Bills repealing Obamacare will be vetoed by President Obama and
there are not enough votes in Congress to override the veto.
There was a loud flap
about the three million who had those high deductible sub-standard insurance
policies and faced losing them, calling foul because of broken promises to be
allowed to keep their insurance or their doctors. Those
who would like to take away Obamacare insurance from the 20 million who will have
had it by the end of 2015 need to remember that most of those getting insurance
in the exchanges once did not even have a doctor they wanted to keep because they
could not afford insurance in the first place.
Some in Congress
favor fixes instead of repealing the law. That includes repealing taxes on
medical devices and removing the mandate that employers provide insurance for
their employees or pay into Obamacare to cover their employees they dump into
the exchanges. A way to replace the income generated by these
taxes, savings and fines to finance Obamacare has not been proposed. Obamacare may cost 1.3 trillion ( billions less
per the Congressional Budget Office) over 10 years, but it actually reduces the
deficit per the Congressional Budget
Office because these fines, savings and
taxes offset costs, and reduces the rate of cost increases. If the GOP fails to fund the fixes, the
deficit will indeed be run up.
A Supreme Court decision in the future may take
away subsidies provided by the federal exchange, but Colorado has a state run
exchange that would not be immediately affected. In the long term, financial soundness of the
law could be affected if many other states do not establish their own state
exchanges.
A version of this appeared in the Sky Hi Daily News Nov. 21, 2014
A version of this appeared in the Sky Hi Daily News Nov. 21, 2014
http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45231-ACA_Estimates.pdf
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