hawaiihealthconnector.com

[peteadams]

"Young males who are statistically very healthy and low on medical costs are subsidizing the price for [fill in your medically unfortunate group]"

Actually, statistically, all of the relatively healthy people who don't use medical services very much are subsidizing the relatively unhealthy people who do. It's really not all about you. That's the way insurance works. Actuarial science and all that.

Speaking of medically unfortunate people, here's two questions. When have you planned your next serious illness? When have you planned your next serious accident?

Obviously you have not done such planning, perhaps because you are a young, healthy male who can't see very far into the future and perhaps thinks serious medical issues will never arise for you, so why get insurance? Guess what. They could.

Perhaps you should take the attitude that you are so happy that you are so darn healthy now that your happiness at your good health overflows into purchasing healthcare insurance. And if in the future you are not so darn healthy, you can also be happy that you purchased healthcare insurance. Win, win.

[Guest]

Pete I do not have the money. Although I do pay for insurance on my vehicle as required to get to work and that does cover my medical costs in case of an accident. As I said before, last time I went to the hospital they billed me and I payed it over the next year, including interest. So I will take financial responsibility for my future accidents or illness as is the law. I do not have the money, I do not have the money, I do not have the money. Maybe if I say it three times you will pull a magical higher paying job out of your ass and eliminate my debt from UHH. In the mean time I will keep eating healthy(even if I can't afford that either) and exercising and see where that leads.

[peteadams]

If you have a very low income and hardly any liquid assets you may then qualify for Quest, the Hawai'i Medicaid. Luckily Hawai'i opted in for the Obamacare Medicaid expansion so that's available for anyone that falls below the subsidized levels of income for the private insurance offerings. Have you looked into that?

http://www.med-quest.us/eligibility/Elig...QUEST.html

ETA: Medicaid, not Medicare

[punaticbychoice]

There is a difference between private health insurance and real health care.
They are 2 very different things.
We all need- individuals, families, business- socialized health care.
Private health insurance is a total rip-off.
ACA (Obamacare) was written by the private health insurance lobbyists. (Karen Ignani chief lobbyist of AHIP {America's Health Insurance Plans}).
Hawaii's "favorite son" President got 15 million in campaign contributions from that private industry in 2008- that's one of the sources of the current so called "health care" law.

[Kapohocat]

hmmmmmm......

Questions - Has any one actually read the 900+ pages of Obamacare bill? (my brother spent about 2 months wading through the whole thing. Not scintillating reading at all. More like war & Peace.)

This is what I know right now based on a $192K hospital bill of my mom's (of which +$1300 was the original ER stop.)

1) Outcome was negative. And last straw was MRSA in hospital.

2) Insurance paid about 40%, hospital wrote off some, secondary insurance paid about 18%, we wrote check for $242.00 Yes $242.

3) Husband had ER visit. No insurance. We paid +$1300 / no portion hospital wrote off like #2 above. We said CASH today, no medical billing, no waiting for money. But nope.


And here is the final chapter - I just posted this on my FB page as I received a statement for Mom's medicare insurance for July 1 - Sept 30, 2013:

Dear Medicare -

In the interest of saving a few federal dollars of admin time and postage mailing statements to my mother, Margaret, for July 1 to Sept 30, 2013 and letting her know she had not met her deductible for 2013, I would like to tell you that as of Dec 2012, Mrs Segovia will no longer be using her medicare insurance. She is in a place where health issues are covered by a higher authority (the same one who watches over Hebrew national hot dogs!) and also she is out of the country (I think) for the time being. Unless you know something we do not, we are not expecting her return anytime soon in any form that will need to be covered by Medicare.

Thank you.
Mrs Segovia's daughter

PS If you have any influence over mailing lists for catalogs, can you please pass this information on to them?


Okay so I dont really know if this health care thing will be good or bad, or who is really going to profit (and yes someone is profiting) but unless I up my savings acct to cover a major medical emergency I will have to go with it. One thing that Calif did for awhile in regards to auto insurance, was let you post a bond for $30K (this was back in the early 80's) instead of buying car insurance.

[Guest]

I have a retirement IRA so I do not qualify as dirt poor. I guess you could call that my fall back catastrophe health insurance if I liquidated it early taking a 10% IRS tax hit.

[Guest]

So has anyone been able to purchase or at least get an actual quote on their Hawaii health insurance?

[birdmove]

Here are the two health care providers available so far on the Big Island:

https://individual-family.kaiserpermanente.org/healthinsurance/?WT.mc_id=118152&WT.srch=1&WT.seg_2=Hawaii_Brand_LearnMore

Click on 2014 and then enter your zip code. Then click get a quote. You will then have a few questions to answer. Birth date, gender, then do you smoke. Number of family members and your income. You can add more family members that you want on the quote too.

Here is the other provider:

http://hmsa.com/health-plans/individuals...lic-plans/

I'm not as familiar with this website. We are going with Kaiser. If you expect to qualify for the subsidies, then you will have to first apply for Medquest. They must turn you down (if your income is too high), and then you take that form and can then sign up for Obamacare. We are waiting for our form where Medquest turned us down. As soon as we get that we are going to go sign up for Obamacare in person. I started an "account" at Hawaiiconnect, but, apparently, when they made changes in the login page, my account was deleted. At least I can't access it any more. That's why we are going to go sign up in person.

In our case, we are going to get a much better deal through Obamacare compared to what Kaiser was charging us for our insurance.

Jon in Keaau/HPP

[Guest]

Sounds good. I think I would prefer to do it in person, rather then submitting my information through a untested webform. Where do you go to sign up in person?

I guess Hawaiihealthconnector.com is just a useless website that does not actually do anything then? Do you find your costs match up with the quote from hawaiihealthconnector.com?

[ourdoc]

You could call them from the number provided at the bottom of the page instead.. Tel: 877-628-5076 (8am-8pm)

For those who think insurance is just a scam, when I was a healthy 38 year old male I was loving life and working hard, raising 3 kids, working 24 hours shifts as a medic, then genetics hit and I ended up requiring a quadruple bypass. Had I not have been in the military when I was younger and had VA coverage, as my work insurance said it was pre-existing because it was genetically caused, I would have been required to pay out over a million dollars for the healthcare I've received since then. Trust me 'insurance was a scam' this makes it so it is no longer a scam. Catastrophic illness can happen at any time. I am much older now, and still have angina daily, but I no longer worry about the coverage when I have to go see a doctor, and again trust me, after going thru what I had, you see the doctor often.