In the US, people will need to pay $6400 per year for health insurance | Hacker News Reader

In the US, people will need to pay $6400 per year for health insurance

nytimes.com

6 pointsck214 comments

The article says "The Congressional Budget Office predicts that by 2019, about 24 million people will have insurance through exchanges, with four-fifths of them getting federal subsidies that average $6,400 a year per person."

The $6400 is referring to subsidies, not premium costs.

Surely the premium costs will be higher than the subsidy, so in some sense the headline is right, although I'm not quite sure what point it's trying to make. Health care costs money. In Canada in 2009, it cost $5452 per person. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada#Economics

That's for actual health care (in Canada).

This is for insurance company payoffs, not actual money spent on health care, which will be a fraction of $6400 after they take their cut.

So you are saying premiums will actually cost more than that.

Note that the $6400+ is for INSURANCE not actual health care.

So pay $300-$600 a month for an annual checkup and maybe a flu visit which they can do nothing for.

And of course for comprehensive coverage when you need major medical care (cancer treatments, surgery, etc.). Part of the health care reform forbids health insurance companies from denying you care based on pre-existing conditions, from kicking off your plan when you get sick, or from imposing lifetime benefit caps.

Unfortunately nothing in the health INSURANCE reform prevents said companies from increasing your rates to the point where you cannot afford it any more so you voluntarily drop their coverage.

So pretend all you want that it actually means you are secure and guaranteed coverage, you aren't if you cannot afford it.

Because I am still on COBRA from my last employer, and because of pre-existing conditions, I am currently paying $7200 a year for my health insurance coverage. For me, it actually saves me money because of the constant medical care I need (I'm a kidney transplant recipient and just my medication and regular labs and doctor visits are expensive enough when I am healthy).

So this is not shocking at all to me. Actually, I am glad that I will be able to pay this one day. If I don't convert my current contract job to full-time employment with employer provided insurance by November, I will be out of luck. It will become literally life or death for me if I get sick.

Well most other rules don't go into effect until years from now so I hope you can find a solution. They may not be able to deny you coverage but there's also nothing stopping them from saying "sure we'll cover you, it will be $14k a year".

I just don't understand why during this insurance shuffle they didn't at least make it free annual checkups for everyone regardless of policy or not. It would save the nation a fortune in the end instead of emergency rooms.

This headline is some serious editorializing.

I took a fact that was buried in the article and made it the title because it's the most important - the actual cost expected to be expended per person on average.

It's a fact from the article, it's not editorializing.

Coincidentally the "Slopegraphs" article currently at the top of the front page has this graph http://charliepark.org/images/slopegraphs/natgeo.jpg which pegs 2007 spending at $7290 per person and shows that American health care is extremely expensive and inefficient.

I only support the health care law because anything is better than the status quo, but by trying to find a compromise it will continue a lot of the current inefficiencies.

I would be very happy if I could pay $6400 / year for health insurance for the family.

The figure is per person. You could just pick one member of your family, but then you'll have to pay penalties for the rest.

No -- the figure is the amount of the subsidy. The article does not talk about the cost of insurance (too many plans, too many variables).

There is some serious reading comprehension failure going on here.

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