70 Percent Increase in Health Insurance Premiums for 2017

Mine increased about 20%, but it is admittedly pretty low, so the impact isn't so great. I am hearing about lots of friends that are seeing jumps of $200 or more per month.

Hillary Clinton has been an active proponent of affordable family healthcare for 25 years. If anyone can clean this mess up she can.

CLINTON 2016!

I guess we are lucky this go around. We have Aetna through DH work place but we could choose either Aetna or BC/BS and the price is the same. Our is just going up 3% and we have the highest plan, one that has a deductible of $750. We pay small co-pays for office visits. There are things that we can do throughout the year to get rebates from the company. Many of them are just going online and viewing videos, or getting a physical, or filling out a questionnaire. As an example, if you both can truthfully sign a statement that you don't smoke, you each get $50. The rebates help to reimburse you for part of the cost of the insurance. It is just crazy that insurance companies are trying to gouge so many people. I am sorry for everyone that is getting hit by drastically higher costs. I don't know how they expect people to pay so much and yet be able to do things to be healthier, like buy healthy foods and go to a gym. It is not likely to change until the insurance companies are taken out of the pockets of fine people of congress.

Yeah, I'd just like to see Hillary try and fix it. She was one of the ones that started this fiasco in the first place.

She's not going to be able to "fix it". We are all screwed. Be prepared for the costs to go up and up and up!!!

Cindy

70% is crazy!! Ouch!

Ours is going up slightly but not much.

We have our "open enrollment" meeting this coming Wednesday to see what our benefits are for CY2017. I prefer to call it "open season on employees." DD ages out on her birthday in 2017 (and just started working at Starbucks again so she could qualify for insurance, since her first job doesn't offer any) and son has insurance available through his job but has been on mine because I don't get any break in out-of-paycheck costs (employee-plus-child/ren). After I find out what's what, the kids an I will have to sit down to figure everything out. DD can, in theory, wait until February when she ages out to change as that would be a qualifying event, but I don't know if I can change from emp+kids to emp-only with DS still eligible, so we may all be making insurance changes for the new year during this time. I need to bug them and ask when their company open enrollment timeframes are too, because if they've already come and gone it'll just have to be dealt with in February.

How good of her to recognize that the current system isn't working when she was fully in favor of it's implementation.

As usual, she says what she thinks people want to hear.

Why is this not simply a case of the insurance companies, big pharma and hospitals being greedy?

Health insurance has never gone down in price in my history. Every year it goes up. THIS year the only difference is they can incorrectly blame it on the President.

I truly do not understand.

Grrrrr...this makes me so mad. I, too, had a 70% increase this next year. I choose to have PPO. I always thought I will pay to not have HMO. However, the increase this year is now out of my budget. I'm a teacher. I have not had a pay increase in 5 years. I teach enrichment classes to balance the increase in my utilities and insurance. I cut cable and my land line completely. Not only did my monthly payment go up hundreds of dollars, my deductible - for just me - went up thousands! I now have to have HMO. Which, is now the same price my PPO was two years ago.

I guess if I felt everyone was paying 'their fair share' and getting the coverage, I would suck it up. However, I know too many people who are getting crap coverage. Then, there was my cousin - an example of what really pisses me off. She was a meth and heroin user. She was a prostitute and a drug dealer. She was put on the list for a liver transplant!!!!! She got 3 sets of dentures because she lost/sold her other ones. She has never had a job or paid taxes her entire life. She was given every handout available - including prescription medication so she wouldn't use illegal drugs (of course, she used both). She was in rehab too many times to keep track of. Her housing and all expenses were taken care of. She refused to volunteer - even at the food banks where she got all of her food. She would say 'they' can't tell her what to do and she doesn't have to do anything. She was on life support for over a week before she died. All of her expenses were paid for by our taxes! How we can not ask someone who was in the system for over 2 decades to do anything is beyond me. I'm tired of excuses and exceptions. My Dad was exposed to Agent Orange, is deaf in his right ear, and had shrapnel that damaged the nerves in his leg and foot. His disability was reduced. Go figure.

Thanks for reading my vent. I really hope as a nation, we can expect more and do better as a whole. I would love to think my increased premiums and taxes are going towards my 66 year old aunt who has the mentality of a two year old, but I know they don't because all of my relatives contribute to her care.

My premiums have gone up every year since I've been employed.  I remember paying something like $50/month for insurance when I was young and childless, and even after we had kids, the premiums must have been reasonable, because we were dead ass broke at that time.

Hillary was quoted recently as saying that a full public option is not a realistic plan only because it will never make it through Congress.  Republicans are dead set against anything they think smacks of socialism.  What is more likely is partial public plan funded by taxes - basically an expansion of Medicare - that will offer basic coverage to anyone who wants it, and then the usual panoply of private plans for those who want a more comprehensive coverage, more choice of physicians, etc.   Similar to the way our school system works, with public available for everyone and private for those who want it/can afford it. Employers will benefit as many middle class and working class folks will opt out of their employer-sponsored plan and go on the universal one, so this could be funded in part by an increase in payroll taxes.  

But the other thing we need to address, truly, is the incredible price-gouging that goes on in the medical industry.  There's no good reason why someone's Epi-pen should cost several hundred dollars, or that the medication I'm currently taking to help with my weight (which is a rebranded version of an old seizure medication used for decades) should cost several hundred dollars.  These are not cutting edge new medications that they're trying to recoup research and marketing costs on.  I don't know what the answer is there, but it's ridiculous.

My premium went from $0 to $738.  Monthly.

Mine, through my employer is going up over 100% for the premiums. The company still pays a big chuck towards the premiums. The copays and deductible went up a little. It will cost me $200 per month more.

A big problem is not the ACA, but rather the cost of health care. DH's costs are over $600k to date this year.