How Obama Care Changed My Retirement – Story
I am 67 years old and recently retired after 48 years with the same company. My wife is 58 years old. While I was working my employer sponsored health insurance for me and my wife was $277 per month or $3324 annually.
My annual income before I retired was $103,000 and my wife did not work. In retirement with pensions, SS and 401K our annual income will be $81,000. My wife is 58 years old and so I went to start her insurance for 2017. Comparable insurance plan to my employer sponsored will cost $1,905.63 monthly, cheapest bronze plan is $889.31 monthly. Combine the bronze insurance cost for my wife with my Medicare premium, supplement premiums and her deductibles our monthly insurance will be $1,647 a month or $19,764 annually. That is 24% of my retirement income. That is a disaster for me. I should have never retired! Worked all my life, paid hundreds of thousands in taxes and now I get shafted when I retire. I am not rich but because I am middle income bracket I will have to pay 24% of my retirement income for medical insurance. Obama care has ruined my retirement. Cancel any travel or fun things. This is not fair and I want something done about it. I have saved and planned for retirement. Budgeted $400 per month on my wife’s insurance and now find it will cost $900 per month with $5,200 deductible and 50% copayments.
Why do the middle income carry all the burden? There are fewer of us every day. Wished I had never voted for Obama.
Nancy Griffeth
Your problem is not with Obamacare, but with Medicare. The main problem is out-of-control health care costs, which have gone from 5% of GDP in 1960 to 17.8% in 2015.
Per capita health care spending in 2015 was $9986, or almost $20000 per couple. So what you are paying is approximately your “fair share”. Most everyone else pays the same, even if their insurance is provided by an employer — remember that employers typically subsidize insurance, which means less money for salaries.
I agree that the costs are ridiculous and unbearable. The problem is, the growth in health care costs is just unsustainable. No other developed country’s health care cost is more than 11% of GDP (undeveloped countries are much lower, but that’s not a fair comparison). If health care costs in the US were only 11% of GDP, your costs would be closer to $6000 a year. We can do better in controlling health care cost!
All of this talk about how we pay for health care — private insurance, government subsidized insurance, single payer — is all beside the point. The real issue is how much we pay for health care.
Bill Blue (No Bilbo Baggins jokes please)
There’s something to what Nancy Griffeth brought up. However, has anyone noticed the rise in stock prices for the Healthcare companies. Since the election in November 2008, the major healthcare payers have seen stock prices rise 700% to 900%. Now adding a few new customers could explain part of it, but there haven’t been enough customers added to account for that type of rise in stock prices. It’d be like having a business servicing 26 customers, and then rising 700-900% in valuation because two new new customers were added.
By and large these companies only shuffle paper – they don’t in general provide heathcare services themselves. Every dollar consumed by their administration and bureaucracy is a dollar that is not being spent on real medical diagnostics and treatment.
United Healthcare
http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UNH/prices/unitedhealth-gp-stock-price-history
Humana Healthcare
http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HUM/prices/humana-inc-new-stock-price-history
Cigna Healthcare
http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CI/prices/cigna-corp-stock-price-history
Anthem Healthcare
http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ANTM/prices/anthem-inc-stock-price-history
Molina Healthcare
http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MOH/prices/molina-hlthcr-stock-price-history
ObamaCareFacts.com
Yes, “the profit spiral.” Those poor, poor, souls only making $5.5 billion instead of $5.9 (which is way up from 2010). Who could have seen that coming… you know except all the insurers who sat around with the Democrats when the ACA was drafted and who got them not to pass single payer and instead stick in things like the reinsurance program and mandate. I mean aside from that, right?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/business/health-insurers-profit.html
Matt B
You know – it doesn’t have to be this expensive. The reason exchange products are expensive is because of a lack of participation (surely to be made worse because of gutting the mandate, lawsuits like Burwell v King which eliminate the subsidies in states without their own exchanges). But the current Medicare Advantage plans, established by the Medicare Reform Act of 2003 initially faced the same obstacles. They were expensive – so nobody bought them. Once the premiums were subsidized by the federal government and issuers reinsured by the fed against loss, the plans became affordable, and attractive. Also, there was a lot better marketing for these products (I mean, practically no one took out ads threatening people with death panels and job loss). Now, there is enough demand for these products that they can be offered widely without subsidy. This is an actual path forward the congress and executive could take to cover everyone and keep the free market involved.
Roberta M Richardson
I’m not sure what you think would have happened BEFORE the ACA. Health insurance premiums were already spring. If you retired under the old system, you still would have been faced with obtaining insurance for your younger wife, and it would have been at least that expensive, if she could have gotten it at all. Any preexisting conditions made it impossible to get individual plans. Yes, it would have been great for you if your employer continued to pick up a substantial part of the bill, but fewer and fewer businesses were able to afford that. This crisis is what led to the effort at reform in the first place.
jerry the "n"
sounds like another GOP fake story. With your income the only medicare supplement you can afford is a useless Obamacare? BTW The $19,000+ is almost a 6,000 tax deduction before any other deductions you take, I’m at a loss. Not believable.
Kim
Mitt Romney’s plan was the basis for the Affordable Care Act. Let us not forget that Obama and the Democrats were in favor of a Single Payor system. Republicans said NO…just as they did with every other piece of legislation that Obama tried to get passed that would have benefited the people instead of the Insurance Companies and Corporate America.
Why did the Republicans behave so poorly? Because they could…because they were biding their time to this last election so they could get total control. Now look…We are being faced with Social Security Cuts!!!
We need to pay closer attention to what is really going on. Who actually formulates the plans and implements plans that harm the people. Who pushed for Corporations to be considered people…and WHY???
ObamaCareFacts.com
Yeah, you are correct. Not many people get this, but they essentially blocked their own Romney Care for 8 years for political reasons. We don’t say that much because it is a little accusatory and divisive. But I do think it is the case in many ways. Why? So they could gut public programs with the support of an angry mob. I really hope Trump ends up being a thorn in their side.
Dave Pugh
I hear you ! My wife and I are retired teachers have to use too much of our retirement which we worked very hard for, to pay for our plan. (Premium, co-pay, out of pocket costs) We are now under a new plan, which is the third time for us to have to change carriers. For us; three new doctors, three insurence carriers, and the use of three different hospitals / clinics. All of this because of insurence companies within the marketplace bailed out. Time will tell as to the future. I am older than my wife and have been told because of me going on Medicare, her insurence cost will be much higher and I will have to pay more for supplement ins. under Medicare. Looks like we either pay up or die. We don’t work now so I wonder if we qualify for free everything, like the gal at the doctors office I talked to who paid $26.00 this year for her health plan. Oh, she also received free hearing, vision, and dental ( according to her). Sad, really sad. We worked all our life, for this ! I do have compassion for those who are truly down on their luck but just take a look at the percentage of those on food stamps, kids on free book / lunch programs, or government housing as an example. It would seem that Bernies dream of a Socialist state is nearly 50% in this country. My father worked for the U.S. Gov. He had great health care insurance. Lawmakers and government workers should be required to be members of the few Marketplace plans left, so they would experience this nonsense !