Lower health care costs not reaching rural areas
By Reed Abelson, Katie Thomas and Jo Craven McGinty, New York Times
As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans.
While competition is intense in many populous regions, rural areas and small towns have far fewer carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. Those places, many of them poor, are being asked to choose from some of the highest-priced plans in the 34 states where the federal government is running the health insurance marketplaces, a review by the New York Times has found.
Of the roughly 2,500 counties served by the federal exchanges, more than half, or 58 percent, have plans offered by just one or two insurance carriers, according to an analysis by the Times of county-level data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services. In about 530 counties, only a single insurer is participating.
The analysis suggests that the ambitions of the Affordable Care Act to increase competition have unfolded unevenly, at least in the early going, and have not addressed many of the factors that contribute to high prices. Insurance companies are reluctant to enter challenging new markets, experts say, because medical costs are high, dominant insurers are difficult to unseat, and powerful hospital systems resist efforts to lower rates.
Obama, Reid and Pelose have done great harm to our health care system and it will continue to get worse.
Have you seen the interview with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Ron Emanuel’s brother and one of the key players and designers of this debacle, he was a typical unaccountable arrogant liberal. Rude and insistent that it is everyone else’s fault that the problems are occurring.
How would anyone respect a cretin like this guy? Or his thug brother Ron, another disaster, look what has happened to Chicago in the last two years.
America is becoming a liberal failure everywhere you look.
Yesterday’s flower children are today’s bloomin’ idiots and America is worse for it.
Amen CJ
I’ve read where millions of people with healthcare will no longer be able to buy their existing policy.
Has anyone read or experienced being able to buy comparable coverage at the same or lower price?
For those without coverage today, are they finding that the cost is what they expected?
Tahoeadvocate, this is true because there are quite a number of policies out there that are called catastrophic health plans, that no longer meet the min. requirements of ACA, so they will have to go to another plan, but same carrier or they could shop for another carrier also. They will probably see an increase of premuim as they will be recieving more benefits than their old plans. Much like you would expect your premuim to go up on your auto policy if you added comp and collision on your basic auto policy.
No big surprise that the wealthy millionaires that comment here love the teabagger ‘perspective’ of their stooges like McClintock that fight for their right to pay less taxes than ever-why should they worry about any of the little people getting health care?-they never worried about bankruptcy from med bills cause they always could afford cadillac plans-as far as the other dupes-your brain scrubbed to vote against your own best interests
Today I learned that we can simply blame Chicago’s violence problem on Liberals, and avoid talking or thinking about any of the more complicated explanations. Who wants to talk about the cycle of poverty and disparate social services and the drug war.
In summary, America sucks and we can blame it on one specific group, hippies.
I must question Teatotalled’s assertion that there are millionaires posting here.
I for one am at the low end of the middle class income spectrum. I just happen to believe is self reliance, free enterprise, and liberty.
Are there any millionaires here who are regular posters? I doubt it. They’re busy with more important things, for the most part.
He must be talking about CJ who has not lived in the basin for at least 10 years. Or maybe teatotal is the millionair he speaks of.
tahoeadvocates ‘heritage inherited’ part time summer home fronts Lakeside Beach and businesses that have had free parking on city streets forever-M Elie Alyeshmerni owns Ski Run Marina -for example derp-and CJ pubworks TV was run out of town years ago pennyless and a failure that lost his house and biz and hates everyone in SLT because its our fault
I still don’t understand the hatred for people who may have more than you or I do. I see it as something to aspire to. The USA used to encourage innovation and industriousness. Now it penalizes it with confiscatory taxes, regulations, and class-warfare propaganda from leftist politicians.
I wouldn’t have jobs if it wasn’t for those “wealthy millionaires”. I’m very thankful that they need the services we provide so that we can live here too.
I agree that its class warfare-some choose to be bootlickers-I do not
teatotal— You seem to have a view which is based on misinformation. If you research the ownership of the “heritage inherited part time summer home fronts on Lakeside Beach” you would find that only 1 of them on the front street was inherited by the current owners. The rest were purchased by those owners themselves. Perhaps some were purchased years ago but this was their money which they invested in Lake Tahoe.
There are homes in the rest of the area which were inherited when parents died but the current owners have spent way more money remodeling and maintaining the properties than the original cost. There are homes in that area which were built in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s which have passed through several sales to the current owners. Granted some are still owned by descendants but isn’t that what families should do?
With regards to your comment about parking, you’d think that free parking on city streets was a crime. Do you pay to park on the street where you live? Homes and businesses throughout the city have had free parking,still do and should.
Do you resent the fact that you didn’t have to pay to park to use Lakeside Beach which costs the city nothing? If you go there today, you’d see that the many locals and tourists who enjoyed lunch and sunsets on the beach throughout the year are gone. The beach is empty and so is the paid parking the city installed. I am exaggerating slightly, last Thursday afternoon 2 of the 84 parking spots had cars parked in them and the police were ticketing one of them. Do you think that person will come back? I doubt it.
“Bootlickers”?? Is that what you consider people who work for a living? Do you consider yourself better than the people who pay you?
Such an attitude toward other people might explain why you aren’t a “wealthy millionaire”.
ta-You seem to be obfuscating the beachfront ownership situation as teabaggers always do-you are a millionaire that inherited property and hates to pay any nickel that benefits anybody else-dogula admires your industriousness at being in lucky sperm club-I dont like the parking fees but your personal inconvenience is the least of the problem-if any of your footwear needs attention I know just who to recommend-
Teatotal— There is nothing unclear about private property ownership in my comments. With regards to the ownership of Lakeside Beach, it is privately owned but the owners allow you and everyone else access. They don’t have to do this and if your goal is for them to lock the gate, I don’t understand what you are trying to achieve. The city on the other hand wants you to pay to park so you can use someone else’s property for free.
I had planned to respond to some of your other slanderous comments but it isn’t worth the time to do so. I wish you had achieved financial and spiritual success in life so that you would know how inaccurate your comments are.