I see it all the time. Often I call the VA to see if they have beds for a transfer or to get an authorization to allow admission here. Back in the day, 1 out of 10 got transferred, and then a year or more in Trump’s term that changed. It could have been because of him or not. I assumed he wanted, or put someone in power who wanted, to try to control costs better by not paying other hospitals. It honestly could have been something that was before him related or unrelated to the ACA. It is so hard to know. Now 9 out of 10 patients are transferred to the VA. Although with COVID that number has fluctuated. Regardless, VA insurance often pays other hospitals to admit their patients when their hospitals are full. It is sometimes tied to a service that is outside of their care, but not necessarily.

Yea that happens when they can’t handle it, the active duty side does the same thing when their systems are so overloaded that the medical readiness is suffering or it causes increases in non-deployable troops. It happens but guess who gets stuck with the bill when they try to go outside the network without any justification? They do and 100% of the bill at that.

Typically plans on the exchange are slightly higher for what you get. Mostly this is because the group is a higher risk group than employees from certain employers. The insurance on the plans can’t exclude anyone, and they can’t jack up the price based on someone’s pre-existing conditions like before ACA. What they might learn over time is that there are less people who are high risk on the exchange than they thought because those people are likely on medicaid or medical, and there may be more affluent/low-risk people on the exchange than they thought. These could be contract workers or people that own their own business (no employees). That could be why the prices on California’s exchange went up less than 1%.

$781/mo with a $7600 deductible was my cheapest estimate. No dental. Didn’t see anything ab vision. 50% coverage for hospital, X-ray, specialty, labs and oddly prescriptions drugs.

Hard pass.

Yeah dealing with medical stuff while active duty is a huge PITA. You’re pretty much stuck with whatever is available on post, unless you can somehow manage to get some type of referral to somebody in network in the nearby area.

Being retired is much easier lol

“Oh you broke your arm, Motrin and water - walk it off.”

Oddly every single one of my close buddies that broke a bone on AD had to have them reset multiple times (2-3).

Lol you survived. Congrats to you sir! I was done after 2nd contract.

I legit had a doctor try to prescribe me mucinex like 5min after telling him I was allergic to Mucinex; more specifically guaifensen.... the active ingredient in Mucinex :lol:

The “drink water and take ibuprofen” stereotype is hilarious though because it’s so accurate.

Apparently this is the future:

https://www.metatube.com/en/videos/3...ass-Car/embed/

(Yes, this is a joke, but it's funny nonetheless)

I've never seen a "vision insurance" program that wasn't really just a discount program off list price. It's always seemed like a waste to me.

In general though, health insurance really isn't insurance, its a prepaid medical plan with a maximum payout.

Basically, it's like if when you bought auto insurance it included all the standard maintenance and mechanical repairs for free along with your catastrophic loss (accident) insurance.

What we have is more like a cost sharing program.

Here's a good article that explains it better than I did.

I’ve had BCBSs blue vision for a few years, they cover most everything even some of the cost of new frames/lenses every year. I don’t really consider this particular plan a discount program because I have never had to pay anything outside of the premium. But I get what you’re saying. Maybe I just have the Cadillac plan.

I have my insurance via Covered California (which essentially is ACA in California).

Comparing it to my previous Kaiser plan from my previous employer, it is identical premium-wise.

The only thing different is any type of subsidies you might get from Covered CA, which is based on your income.

Much like car insurance, health insurance varies wildly depending on the type of plan (HMO/PPO) as well as where you live.

I pay ~$300/month for my Kaiser HMO. But I also have never needed prescription drugs in my life, so I went with a Bronze plan instead of something higher.

Covered CA offered me dental + vision (via VSP) for an additional ~$20/mo. The vision part essentially gives me a free checkup a year + about $100 credit towards contacts or frames.

Thanks for chiming in.

Is this a self only plan? I agree, there are a lot of variables. My question is more geared towards how your coverage and service have been but it kind of seems like you don’t need it. lol

The concept of basing insurance rates off of capability to pay is asinine to me. We can talk ab how insurance companies come up with premiums but it’s pretty widely known. So it’s progressive rates for the same service. That is another hard pass for me. To me, that’s like charging someone more for a gallon of milk because they earn more.

Who said I don't need it? Just because I have no medical condition doesn't mean I don't need health insurance.

It's like saying "I've never been in a wreck in the last 20 years, so I don't need car insurance"... which I have not had in 20 years on a public road. But that isn't the point of insurance.

Insurance is there to cover risk. Whether or not I use the insurance coverage is a moot point. To view health insurance as different from any other type of insurance is missing the big picture.

Every person in their life will need health coverage at some point, whether they want to or not. Most of the coverage needed is at birth (when it's under your parents or whomever took care of you until you were an adult) or when you are dying/dead (whether it is from an illness or natural death). To assume "one can pay for their own" is ignoring the above two situations. Am I supposed to go back in time and pay my parents back for the coverage (or lack of) when I was a child, when I was born?

But that's not a valid comparison.

The fundamental concept of health insurance being subsidized is just a general concept of the fact that a healthy population costs less to maintain than an unhealthy one. So if you were to provide more coverage (overall) then you'd pay less over a period of 30-60+ years.

A lot of this gets into very specific types of economic modeling for socio-economical conditions that are too difficult for a few discussion posts here, but at some point it needs to be emphasized that a healthcare subsidy is NOT the same as someone paying more for a good or service.

The premium I pay ($300/month) is me, unmarried 41 year old male in California on the Kaiser Bronze plan. The only difference before/after ACA is that California offers a subsidy up to ~$300 depending on my level of income, and it goes away entirely once my income is above a certain threshold.

That's all. What I pay for my healthcare does not change, what the state subsidizes changes. So it's like a gallon of milk is the same for everyone, except those that are poor can pay with food stamps from the state.

Pump the brakes. I wasn’t being accusatory. I was speaking figuratively and lightly suggested you were healthy. I never suggested that you should not have health insurance.

I didn’t even challenge anything you said in your post. I just said I disagreed with progressive insurance rates based on capability. Which you have no control over. So why the hostility?