People are bad at Choosing Health Plans

Nancy Pelosi was correct, "You won't know what you get until you sign it "

It used to be that purchasing a home was the most important financial decision in one's life. Today, selecting insurance is right up there.

The Affordable Care Act passage did not make insurance affordable or accessible. It did make it much more complex especially for those who never had insurance coverage.  It is a new landscape cratered with deductible, copayments, premiums, and charts defining eligibilty for subsidies

If  you are confused....you have come to the right place.   Even physicians and hospitals are overwhelmed with new diagnostic codes, CMS rulings and the new affordable care act. Change has occured so quickly that statistical comparisons of  health cae costs between 2010 and 2015 will be unreliable because there is cost shifting taking place due to  change from volume based reimbursement to quality measures, such as re-admission rates.   The new reimbursement actually does depend upon fee for service. The net payment will be reduced if quality goals are not met. ( a form of penalty.) Bonus payments for meeting quality standards will vary from insurer to insurer. Medicare and Medi-Cal will have their own formulas.

It is   no wonder that

People are bad at choosing health plans, part 1

Open enrollment is approaching for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans (Nov. 1), Medicare Advantage (Oct. 15), Medicare Part D plans (also Oct. 15), and for many employer-sponsored plans (dates vary by employer, but mine is Nov. 10). Apart from cases in which employers only offer one plan, in all these markets consumers have several to dozens of plan options. Are people good at choosing among them?

Nope. That’s a consistent finding across a large and growing body of research.