

In the US, people will need to pay $6400 per year for health insurance - ck2
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/us/politics/12health.html

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Anechoic
The article says "The Congressional Budget Office predicts that by 2019, about
24 million people will have insurance through exchanges, with four-fifths of
them getting federal subsidies that average $6,400 a year per person."

The $6400 is referring to subsidies, not premium costs.

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chancho
Surely the premium costs will be higher than the subsidy, so in some sense the
headline is right, although I'm not quite sure what point it's trying to make.
Health care costs money. In Canada in 2009, it cost $5452 per person.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada#Economics>

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ck2
That's for actual health care (in Canada).

This is for insurance company payoffs, not actual money spent on health care,
which will be a fraction of $6400 after they take their cut.

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travisbhartwell
Because I am still on COBRA from my last employer, and because of pre-existing
conditions, I am currently paying $7200 a year for my health insurance
coverage. For me, it actually saves me money because of the constant medical
care I need (I'm a kidney transplant recipient and just my medication and
regular labs and doctor visits are expensive enough when I am healthy).

So this is not shocking at all to me. Actually, I am glad that I will be able
to pay this one day. If I don't convert my current contract job to full-time
employment with employer provided insurance by November, I will be out of
luck. It will become literally life or death for me if I get sick.

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ck2
Well most other rules don't go into effect until years from now so I hope you
can find a solution. They may not be able to deny you coverage but there's
also nothing stopping them from saying "sure we'll cover you, it will be $14k
a year".

I just don't understand why during this insurance shuffle they didn't at least
make it free annual checkups for everyone regardless of policy or not. It
would save the nation a fortune in the end instead of emergency rooms.

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guelo
This headline is some serious editorializing.

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ck2
I took a fact that was buried in the article and made it the title because
it's the most important - the actual cost expected to be expended per person
on average.

It's a fact from the article, it's not editorializing.

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guelo
Coincidentally the "Slopegraphs" article currently at the top of the front
page has this graph <http://charliepark.org/images/slopegraphs/natgeo.jpg>
which pegs 2007 spending at $7290 per person and shows that American health
care is extremely expensive and inefficient.

I only support the health care law because anything is better than the status
quo, but by trying to find a compromise it will continue a lot of the current
inefficiencies.

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chadp
I would be very happy if I could pay $6400 / year for health insurance for the
family.

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Uhhrrr
The figure is per person. You could just pick one member of your family, but
then you'll have to pay penalties for the rest.

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makisupa123
No -- the figure is the amount of the subsidy. The article does not talk about
the cost of insurance (too many plans, too many variables).

There is some serious reading comprehension failure going on here.

