All the companies I've ever worked for have done their open enrollment and insurance plan changes at the start of the new year.

But it's a weird data set, now that you mention it. The cruxes of each line seem to happen definitively at months 3, 6, and 9, as if this chart is based on quarterly earnings reports but for some reason doesn't get to include the fourth quarter report in December each year. Missing data aside, this would mean that the September number is probably the amount spent in the months of June, July, and August combined.

I can see a few possible contributing factors for why summer would have lower costs. One, people don't want to screw up their vacation time with anything elective. Two, road accidents are down since all the ice and snow are gone. Three, people are holding off to see how the annual deductible/out-of-pocket numbers are looking towards the end of the year. Late Fall is the time to hurry up and squeeze in any elective procedures they've been waffling on, before everything rolls back to zero in January.

Aren't MVA's (including medical) managed by the car insurance,
not via the personal health care insurance ?

Only for the other guy, not for you unless you have optional coverage.

Indeed it is.

Well, it does say "Nine most recently reported quarters"

1st, 2nd and 3rd of 2007, 1st, 2nd and 3rd of 2008 and 1st, 2nd and 3rd of 2009.

Exactly what happened to the fourth quarter of each year remains a mystery.

That is quite weird.

In most cases medical damages incurred via a MVA are paid in this order:
1)Auto PIP (Personal Injury coverage). Most people, in fact the VAST MAJORITY of people only have $5,000 of PIP coverage.
Personal injury protection is coverage for medical and other expenses, such as wage loss and funeral expenses, which result from an auto accident.

2)Once that is used up (typically the transport TO the hospital is in the several thousand dollar range) it goes to the individuals personal health insurance coverage.

3) After that it goes to the individual them self.

For example, lets say a young man is driving a car and swerves off the road hitting a tree. He suffers traumatic injuries at the scene and is transported to the hospital where he stays for a month. After which he is transferred to a rehabilitation facility and stays for another four months.
Total Bill: $2,000,000
Auto insurance paid ......................$5,000
Personal medical insurance paid.....$1,800,000
Father is responsible for ...............$195,000

Yup. :(

Jesus Christ. That's obscene.

Yeah, but we don't want to change things...:rolleyes:

What has been done changes none of that. NONE.
ZERO cost controls on suppliers, providers, pharma, nor hospitals. The only cost control is on those evil insurance companies who have an average profit margin of just over 3%. :eyebrow:

No kidding. It's the first step. It was difficult enough getting this passed (and repubicans want to repeal it). Do you think an act that went further would have been passed or accepted by Americans?

So you are admitting that the ACA doesn't have the cost controls it was sold to us with?

Depends upon the plan.

To what cost controls are you referring, specifically?

Classic, is the word "control" the right word.

There have been many changes that affect the patient's costs,
such as the requirements for free preventative care, free vaccines, mammagrams, etc.
along with the soon-to-be-in-effect reductions in medicare costs.

That is, the ACA doesn't specifiy a maximum price on things
(which soon would become the minimum price), but instead
pushes management to implement changes that reduce costs.

Do such as these meet the definition of cost controls ?

I've mentioned this about a gazillion posts back, but ...

The US system spends around 25% of the "health care" budget on administration. In other OECD countries that is around 10%, in Taiwan, a tad over 1%.

The US system has the most extreme liability/compensation arrangements, adding huge liability insurance costs, and forcing doctors to do exhaustive and expensive testing to rule out those one-in-a-million diseases, to cover their asses.

AFAIK, the current changes address neither of these things.

FWIW, there are various "outcome assessments" to determine,
for example, which lab tests and procedures are most/more effective and efficient.
Part of the justification for looking at such outcomes is the idea
that physicians can/should stop ordering lab tests when their
reason is just to document or avoid malpractice.

Some recommendations get a lot of (negative) publicity,
while other changes are implemented without fanfare.
Blood test of men for prostate cancer and women's mammograms
are examples of recommendations that became highly public.

But as such, these don't fit my concept of a cost control, because
they are based more on the science than on the fiscal, even though
the financial costs are brought into the considerations.

Dunno. The ACA went after the Ins Co's and their 3% profit margin while it didn't address the underlying costs. Call it what you want.

It took a couple months to show up in my paycheck, but I just got my Obamacare rebate. My portion of the rebate was $390 after taxes. That's real money. Thank you, Obama!

And I should note that it's open enrollment time for insurance for next year, and the costs have gone up again, but by the same amount as they did last year, and less than the year before. So Obamacare doesn't seem to be driving up premium prices. My personal anecdotal evidence says that so far, it is working better than the old way.

I still reserve the right to judge it differently as more data comes in, but so far, so good.

My Rxs appear to have come down in price. I don't know if it's directly or even indirectly due to Obamacare, but I likey!

My mom's best buddy, a repub, admitted how much she and her husband were saving on their medications thanks to Obamacare. Seniors on a fixed income...who do they think they are catching a break? They should pull themselves up by their orthopedic shoes.

... it's time for a Mental Health Day party

:celebrat:

Obama giving rebates right before the election?? Typical Chicago politics...

:lol:

I think it's a "wake the fuck up and here's some hard evidence for you..."

Instead of listening to Romney say nothing has changed, nothing is better. Like the radio ads that make it seem like Romney has shot China right in the face then stomped all over them 'cause he's SO against outsourcing.

Fudging liar extraordinaire.

The timing has nothing to do with Obama. The Republican controlled Supreme Court ruled the law constitutional, and the insurance companies immediately started to comply by announcing these rebates. It took my firm a couple months to figure out how to fairly distribute the rebate sent by the insurance company.

I credit Obama because it's Obamacare, but the timing was due to the ineptness of my firm in processing the payment that it received in August.

Super asshole right here.

Charge more, if your costs go up? Fine. If your margin is low, you've got no choice.

Defend your decision by saying "hey, no problem! You can tip less to punish your waiter for getting health insurance!"? Asshole award.

Not to mention that he likely cut the hours of that employee you're going to tip less, in order to avoid paying for their healthcare anyway.

How about if customers skip tipping completely at this douchebag's restaurants? Then he will be forced to pay his waitstaff the federal minimum wage, which would be over $5 more than their 'tipped' hourly wage. Tips at Denny's are probably pretty low to begin with.

According to the link, Metz owns about 40 Denny's, never mind his other franchise operations, etc. The man is obviously not struggling to get by, but he wants to make sure his employees get plunged into poverty just so he can make a self serving political statement.

A meal at Denny's seldom costs more than $20.00/person. 5% of that comes to ONE DOLLAR. Well, that's sure going to wreck havoc with everyone's ability to eat at Denny's. Metz could just raise his prices by a buck, and hardly anyone would notice.

But no. Instead he has to cause his employees financial hardship by cutting their hours and making customers wonder if they should tip at all. I hope every last person who works for Metz finds another job and quits. What a loser!

If people like Metz paid their workers a decent wage in the first place then Obamacare may not have been needed at all. If employers weren't expecting their employees to work for a pittance that doesn't accomodate health insurance, then there would have been no need to insist they pay towards their employees' healthcare.

If you cannot afford to pay your staff a living wage (enough to pay for insurance, or incoporating healthcare as part of the package) then you cannot afford those staff. Too many employers treat wages and employee benefits as a variable and contingent cost, which can be moulded around their profit margin. If a business can only be profitable by paying less than a living wage then it is not a good business.

The cost of doing business must include decent and fair remuneration for staff.

But people eat at Denny's because it is cheap, not because the food is good. If you pay the workers better, the price of the food will have to go up, and people will tend to stop eating there. They will go to a better restaurant for the same high price, or more likely, stay home and heat up a frozen dinner. Then the owner will have to lay off workers.

You have to strike a balance for sure, but at the Denny's end of the spectrum, there isn't a lot of money to play around with. It's not some five star restaurant where you pay $150 for a meal for two.

But talking about the staff at Denny's or any food-serving business is another cocoon.

The US has this tradition for food-servicing staff of $1/hr + tips, or some such formula.
For some, this leads to decent or even very high incomes; but for others
it's a last-ditch job to have any income at all, or for others it is something in between.

I hate bartering for goods or services (think: car salesmen and tipping waiters or waitresses :eyebrow:)
but in the US it is futile to try to find a way around this tradition.

It's this rigid tradition that keeps the Metz's of the food-service world in business.

I found this article about the choices doctors make in their own healthcare at the end of their lives to be a very fascinating read.

In a nutshell, doctors understand the treatment options available and realize when treatment is futile, so they tend not to opt for anything aggressive or heroic, even though they can afford it. They tend to only get treatments that will work.

The result for them is that they have a better quality of life at the end and live about as long as others do. And there is a lot less cost associated with their deaths. Interesting read.

Really interesting read. Thanks, glatt.

3 oldster, at this moment, are saying that Obama is a dictator, that he put in trillions of dollars of debt through his Obamacare, and ask why does the government want to get into healthcare, anyway? Yes, they are all on Medicare. Whoa, one just said that he KNOWS that if he wants to go to Dr. Burger, Obamacare won't let him.

@Glatt: That is a good read... for everyone.

I once taught a university class on medical ethics for laymen,
which had a very broad range of people attending -
from physicians to ranchers to mechanics to business exec's and parents.

The end-of-life time came up frequently, and the range of preferences was very wide.
I do remember the physicians in the class were much in line
with your article, as were several of those involved in ranching.
Death was not unfamiliar, and quality of life decisions were very important for them.

I got a kick out of one person's response at the other end of that spectrum.
Her response was an emphatic: "Keep me going no matter what! "
She was an executive in a company that made kidney dialysis equipment.

By the end of the class, there had been many intimate discussions, and we felt we knew a lot about one another.
Some of the debates were quite vigorous... religion, money, legal liabilities, suffering...
But I felt there was always respect for each person's thoughts and feelings.

At the last class meeting, I provided copies of (Oregon's) Living Will and Advance Directive.
I think everyone took copies for themselves and their families.

So even the lady above could have made her wishes known confidentially to her family,
which is one of the most important things about end of life decisions.

Children, in particular, need to know the wishes of their parents.

I think it is quite interesting that many of the state officials and politicians
that originally fought Obamacare are now changing their tunes.
Maybe they explain it on the basis of political pressure, or lowering state budget costs,
it probably doesn't matter how they rationalize their actions.

The business community, especially "small business" has been pretty quiet til recently.
But it looks as tho even they are changing over too.

Fredericksburg.com
Jim Hall
2/9/13

Health care plans being assessed

Today was the day ... Now to see what happens by 2014

Washington Post
Sarah Kliff
2/18/13

It’s official: The feds will run most Obamacare exchanges

Now the Republicans can concentrate on preventing the Federal exchanges from working.

What? You mean sacrifice the health and welfare of constituents for political gain. :eek:










Again.