The Insurance Mom is back to blogging after a very busy Open Enrollment! Thank you to all our followers and lovely clients who sent along referrals. We are very grateful for you!
It’s been an interesting end of 2016 and beginning of 2017. With that, we are seeing a TON of proposed changes that could affect your health insurance. But, we probably won’t know for quite some time. Remember, it takes a while to un-law a federal law!
But what’s it all mean, Mom!? My brain hurts with all the HSA, tax credits, tax penalties, cross-border, stuff!
Well, that’s why I’m here, sweetie! To take your hand, and tell you to take a deep breath because it’s going to be a long time before we see any changes take places. And so far, no one can seem to get close to agreeing what those changes will be. Now that we’re all feeling a little better, let’s get back to our health insurance education.
Here’s a great article from the fabulous team at Vox which does great work at explaining things in a simple way. But the gist is this… Trump proposes these things:
- Pre-existing conditions will not affected.
- The tax credit thing is going to change, likely based on age not income.
- Trump and the GOP really like Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).
- He wants to remove the plan restrictions. So that whole metallic thing will likely go away and companies can design their own plans again.
- Trump is a little unclear about the Medicaid situation, but the GOP seems to want to decrease Medicaid enrollment.
- Trump would like to reduce costs of insurance and drugs.
Here’s the Insurance Mom’s takes on these things, by the numbers:
- Goodie.
- The GOP’s current proposal called the American Health Care Act (AHCA, sound a little bit familiar?) will mostly affect poor people and older people (and not necessarily in a good way).
- HSA’s only help people with extra money to use as a tax shelter. And, the GOP would have to rewrite entire sections of the IRS rules. Good luck with that!
- Trump wants to change the way Medicaid funding goes to the states… which ultimately means that less people will get less benefits.
- Wouldn’t that be nice?
BUT… nowhere in any of this is any discussion (or acknowledgement) about the real cost drivers of increasing health insurance premiums… the COST of delivery medical care! Your fave docs (and hospitals and drug companies) can still charge whatever they want. And YOU have no idea what that is when you go to the doctor or until you pick up a prescription, right??
I’d love to know your thoughts, my readers! What are you worried about? What questions do you have? The Insurance Mom is here to guide you.
