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Health insurance costs ‘wildly inflated’ for government workers, analysis finds

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  • Health insurance costs ‘wildly inflated’ for government workers, analysis finds

    https://www.ocregister.com/2019/09/1...nalysis-finds/

    One of the most generous health insurance plans enjoyed by a California public servant last year — costing $80,665 — went to a communications manager for the obscure Water Replenishment District of Southern California.

    At the embattled Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — raided by the FBI in July, and yet to produce documents detailing how a worker earned $313,865 in overtime pay — there were 153 workers with health plans costing $57,816 each.

    In Riverside County’s Rubidoux Community Services District, the general manager received health benefits totaling $55,717. In San Bernardino County’s Cucamonga Valley Water District, the general manager’s health benefits cost $38,191 to cover his family. In Anaheim, 31 workers — mostly in public safety — had health plans costing more than $36,000 each.
    This is so outrageous !
    People are struggling to get a decent medical plan and here this local and state officials are receiving a far out outrageous insurance premiums paid by the The Tax payers!

  • #2
    Re: Health insurance costs ‘wildly inflated’ for government workers, analysis finds

    Health Insurance That Doesn’t Cover the Bills Has Flooded the Market Under Trump
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...-floods-market

    Early one Friday morning two years ago, David Diaz woke up his wife, Marisia, and told her he didn’t feel right. He asked her to pray with him. Their son called 911, and within minutes, Marisia was tailing an ambulance down the dirt road away from the couple’s house on the outskirts of Phoenix to a hospital in the city. David had had a massive heart attack.
    Before being wheeled into surgery, he whispered the PIN for his bank card to Marisia, just in case. But the double-bypass operation was successful, and two weeks later he was discharged.
    On her way out, Marisia gave the billing clerk David’s health insurance card. It looked like any other, listing a copay of $30 for doctor visits and $50 for “wellness.” She’d bought the plan a year earlier from a company called Health Insurance Innovations Inc., with the understanding that it would be comprehensive. She hadn’t noticed a phrase near the top of the card, though: “Short-Term Medical Insurance.”
    The Diazes’ plan was nothing like the ones consumers have come to expect under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which bars insurers from capping coverage, canceling it retroactively, or turning away people with preexisting conditions. But the law includes an exemption for short-term plans that serve as a stopgap for people between jobs. The Trump administration, thwarted in its attempts to overturn the ACA, has widened that loophole by stretching the definition of “short-term” from three months to a year, with the option of renewing for as long as three years.
    Fewer than 100,000 people had such plans at the end of last year, according to state insurance regulators, but the Trump administration says that number will jump by 600,000 in 2019 as a result of the changes. Some brokers are taking advantage, selling plans so skimpy that they offer no meaningful coverage. And Health Insurance Innovations is at the center of the market. In interviews, lawsuits, and complaints to regulators, dozens of its customers say they were tricked into buying plans they didn’t realize were substandard until they were stuck with surprise bills. The company denies responsibility for any such incidents, saying it’s a technology platform that helps people find affordable policies through reputable agents.
    Six months after David’s surgery, the Diaz family got a particularly big surprise bill—an error, Marisia thought when she saw the invoice. But when she called her insurer, she was told she’d have to pay the full amount: $244,447.91.
    That sucks!!

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