Sad (Potential) Vendor Trick

So a few weeks ago, got an email from an outfit called "Agent Pipeline" touting a new (to me, anyway) product called "Minimum Essential Coverage Plans." These are stripped down plans that meet the strict ACA guidelines enough that policyholders avoid the ObamaTax,  but because they're pretty bare-bones supposedly save money.

I'm currently working on an interesting case where there are a sizable number of employees who don't qualify for the group health plan (hours worked) but manage to make too much to qualify for Medicaid. So I thought that perhaps this might be something to look into for those folks.

The plan covers the general Minimum Essential benefits (preventive care, x-rays, etc), and is quite affordable: about $150 a month for a single person. It also covers quite a range of telemedicine services, and because it's not an ObamaPlan, one can enroll outside Open Enrollment without a qualifying event.

So, pretty sweet-looking, but I had a few questions:

1 – Is this available for groups/employer-based only, or for individuals, as well? Also, what about associations?

2 – If group, what’s minimum size, and are there participation requirements (either number of people and/or employer premium contributions)?

3 – Pretty sure I know the answer to this, but what about catastrophic claims (cancer, etc)?

4 – The brochure says you’ll accept $$ from HSA accounts, but these plans aren’t on the 213d list of approved expenses. How does that work here?

These seem pretty obvious, simple things to me, and so I expected a prompt reply.

That was two weeks ago, with a helpful nagmail in-between, and still none.

'Tis a shame, no?

Late Week LinkFest

■ From the "Stopped Clock Twice-a-Day Department:" Sarah Kliff's post on "The Obamacare problem that Democrats don’t want to talk about" touches on some common themes we've written about for many years. And she puts a decidedly human face on the problem:

"Pieknik is a 37-year-old PhD student ... She earns $42,000, which is just slightly too much to qualify for tax credits where she lives ... So right now she’s facing a choice: Pay a lot more money, or scale back her level of coverage."

I'll note in passing that, at age 37, the "free" maternity care that makes up a substantial part of that premium is likely not a big selling point for her.

■ And from the "In Case You Missed it Department," we learn that North Star State governor Mark Dayton agrees with both Ms Kliff and noted right-winger Bill Clinton:

"Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton on Wednesday said that the increase in health insurance costs in Minnesota highlights “some serious blemishes right now and serious deficiencies” in the federal health care law known as Obamacare."

No kidding.

I still don't understand why these people keep telling obvious lies.

■ Finally, FoIB Allison Bell has at least a partial answer to a question we've been asking for a while now:

"About 94.5 percent of tax filers who owed mandate penalties paid them by December 2015"

She also noted that the IRS was giving some late-payers a break by writing off over a quarter of all late payments.

To be sure:

"The IRS wrote off some of those late payments because the people who owed the payments were dead"

Doesn't necessarily keep them from voting, of course.

Deathwatch: Belgian child edition

Belgium joins Britain in the race to kill off their children:

"The first child to be killed by “assisted suicide” since Belgium legalized the practice for minors has had his life snuffed out."

We first reported on Belgium's new "euthenasia tourism" push a few months ago, when co-blogger Mike tipped us that "Doctors at hospitals and clinics at Belgium’s capital are seeing an increase in number of euthanasia tourists who are travelling from across the world."

#Progress!

CanuckCare & Medical Tourism, Revisited

We've been blogging about the propensity for many of our Neighbors to the North to come south of the border to receive actual health care, such as in this post from over 6 years ago:

"Canadian Premier Danny Williams has chosen to circumvent the obviously superior (and free!) Canadian health care system, by flying to the United States for heart surgery, which is widely and freely available in his home country."

Previously, other powerful Canadians, such as MP Belinda Stronach had also chosen to have care rendered here.

Now FoIB Holly R helpfully alerts us to this factoid:

"An estimated 52,000 Canadians left the country to receive non-emergency health care in 2014"

Reason I bring this up is that recently, one of the two major party Presidential candidates averred that many Canadians come here for care that is supposedly widely and quickly available in their own country. Now, it's true that there have been recent attempts to privatize at least some sectors of the Canadian boondoggle health care system, with mixed results. But the fact remains that such care is unavailable to the majority of Canadians, and the sad truth is that the implosion of our own system impacts them, as well.

Just an observation.

Captain Obvious Speaks

"[I]t’s pretty clear that premiums for health insurance plans sold on the marketplace will increase more in 2017 than they did in 2016."

You don't say.

[Hat Tip: FoIB Holly R]

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer

I am raising money with my team, Love, Hope and Faith, who will walk on Saturday, October 15th in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk in Dayton,Ohio.

Will you help out by making a donation - any amount helps.

Thank you!!

MVNHS© Infighting: "Vultures" vs Rats

First up, the scavengers:

"Vulture lawyers bleed the NHS for £418m: Their sickening fees in one year are enough to hire 19,000 nurses"

As here, British barristers often append outsized fees to relatively modest awards. In some cases, they've been willing to (dramatically) reduce their "take," but only after being "forced to accept" the lower amount.

Meantime, those who actually provide the care that's under scrutiny are abandoning ship in droves:

"More than four out of 10 doctors are planning to practise medicine overseas and levels of workplace stress have risen across the profession"

Of course they are: under nationalized health care schemes such as the Much Vaunted National Health Service©, doc's are limited as to how much they can earn, and often forced to work longer hours. Why wouldn't they start looking elsewhere?

And of course, if they're going to end up being sued for the care they do provide, where exactly is the incentive to tough it out?

[Hat Tip: FoIB Hilly R]