Obamacare created a system that actually made insurance more expensive, decreasing access to the poor and sick, while pricing out average Americans from affordable health care coverage. Millions more have been added to Medicaid, millions have seen double or triple their annual premiums and millions have opted not to be insured at all.
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Only the top five insurers have profits in excess of $1 billion. All the others had 2014 profits of less than $300 million. But the top five also have membership of at least 20 million, with Humana being the lowest (21.4 million) and CIGNA and UnitedHealthGroup having the highest (86 and 85 million members worldwide, respectively).
When you divide a figure measured in billions by membership measured in many millions, the resultant is rather modest. The average Fortune 500 health insurer earned profits of only $51 per member in 2014. Thus we could trim the monthly health insurance premium by about $4.25 were we to confiscate all those “obscene profits” and give them back to plan members.
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In the March 8 rule, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that Health Savings Account (HSA) eligibility was not a meaningful distinction for health plans because consumers can determine whether a plan is HSA-qualified by examining a plan’s cost-sharing amounts. Therefore, it will not require HSA-qualified plans to be designated as such.
Two main reasons why HSA-qualified plans will not survive is because plans must cover services below the deductible that are not considered “preventative care.” And the plans must apply specific deductibles and out-of-pocket limits that are outside the requirements for HSA-qualified plans.
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