February 11, 2015 by yempl

Millions Choose the Tax Penalty over ObamaCare Insurance

Starting January 1^st, 2014, Americans were given a choice between complying with the federal mandate to buy ObamaCare health insurance plans or paying a penalty set according to their taxable yearly income and size of their households. However, many are opting for what’s behind Door #2. According to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, approximately six million Americans would rather pay the annual penalty rather than purchase insurance plans.

Of the six million, 10% are below the federal poverty level for 2016, which is estimated to be $12,000 for an individual and $24,600 for families with four. While the penalty is $285 per family at most in 2014, it is expected to rise to $975 in 2015 and $2,085 by 2016. Meanwhile, for individuals, the cost would be $95 in 2014 and $325 and $695 for 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Many Are Choosing to Pay the Fine

Interestingly, many employers across the United States are choosing to pay the fine rather than offering employer-based health insurance since the former is much cheaper. According to a report from the House Ways and Means Committee, 71 of the top 100 American companies would rather drop their health care plans and pay the penalty to save handsome amounts of money. In fact, the71 Fortune 100 companies surveyed estimate savings of up to $28.6 billion by 2014 alone if they paid the penalty for not providing health insurance to their employees.

Also forgoing ObamaCare health insurance coverage are those exempted from penalties altogether. Individuals with income so low that they won’t file a federal tax return or those unable to find coverage that costs less than 8% of their annual income are spared from paying fines. Other individuals exempted from fines include Indian tribe members, citizens whose religious beliefs clash with health insurance, overseas Americans, undocumented immigrants, people serving sentence in prison, and members of a health care sharing ministry.

Risk of Facing Huge Medical Bills

If you decide to join these six million individuals and opt out of the mandatory “affordable” health care insurance policies offered, you need to understand that you’ll be responsible for all costs, starting from doctor visits to ambulance rides. You may also be at the risk of facing huge medical bills, forcing you to personal bankruptcy. However, there is still hope.

In order to keep your costs low, you need to start searching for the prices of specific procedures online just like you would usually when shopping for a product or service. Using tools such a Yempl, you can easily get the procedure prices of providers in your area and easily compare them with a few clicks. This will help you get a service within your budget and save you from the hidden disadvantages of ObamaCare. So make the smartest choice for yourself and start shopping and comparing medical service rather than depending on health care insurance.

Find prices for medical services and procedures in your area www.yempl.com

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How to Beat ObamaCare with Your Affordable Health Care

February 11, 2015 by yempl

Affordable Health Care, How to Beat ObamaCare

ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, was the government’s initiative to provide affordable health insurance to Americans while regulating the health care industry. Technically in its fourth year, the health care reforms have affected many medical providers, forcing them to cut down staff or at times shut down because they can’t cope with budget cuts. However, you can avoid becoming part of the statistics by offering affordable care on your own.

What Affordable Health Care Means for Your Patients

Patients expect their health care providers to offer treatments and medical procedures for a price within their budgets. To them, the cost of a medical procedure shouldn’t depend on your practice’s location or how much you’re paying for rent. Even you know that deep down. Instead, procedures should be priced according to your knowledge and experience as a physician and how highly your patients review your procedures. Therefore, in order to bring in more patients, revise your prices to become more affordable. Affordable Health Care starts with you.

A Strategy to Cut Costs

For many medical practices, affordability can be an issue. However, the best way to ensure this small yet very profitable detail is by cutting costs. While you can’t avoid paying your staff or covering the expenses of your supplies and equipment, there’s one cost you can cut easily: Marketing Expense.

You can easily reduce your marketing costs and ultimately offer more affordable treatments. This comprehensive medical directory provides members of the affordable health care industry with the opportunity to create their own free profiles and list their prices there. This transparency will be greatly appreciated by your patients and they’ll be inspired to schedule an appointment with you.

However, how does all of this help you cut your marketing costs?

For starters, each profile published on Yempl is search engine optimized. This makes your practice more visible online, bringing more traffic from top search engines whenever a patient searches for a procedure you offer or looks up a physician in your city or zip code. As a result, you won’t have to depend on online marketers to help you establish your brand.

Your profile also allows you to include links to your website and social media profiles. This creates back links, which is a technique that helps improve your site’s ranking on search result. Therefore, you’ll be spared from having to market and optimize your practice’s website.

Finally, each review of every procedure you offer will be included in one place for your clients to see. This will save you and your patients the effort of trying to locate patient reviews to vouch for your expertise.

Because of these benefits alone, many Yempl users have been able to slash their costs. Some affordable health care providers have even taken the next step by providing deals and discounts on their treatments. So cut out your marketing cost and join us to give your patients what they need: affordable health care.

February 11, 2015 by yempl

Beware: ObamaCare’s Low Premium Plans Come with High

ObamaCare, or as it’s formally known as The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, has been signed into law to help improve the American health care system and provide Americans with affordable health insurance. As tempting as this may sound, there is a catch many insurance coverage shoppers are discovering: plans with lower premiums are offered with high deductibles, large costs for prescription drugs, and other cost-sharing.

Crunching the Numbers

After a “window shopping” feature was added to the website, deductible on policies were revealed to go as high as $5,000 for every individual and up to $10,000 for a couple. This means that an insured individual needs to pay these amounts from their own pocket before they can benefit from their insurance coverage.

Studying the health insurance plans further, the average individual deductible for the bronze plans is $5,081 per year in 34 of the 36 states that require federally-run health exchanges. This is approximately 42% higher than the average deductible for an individually purchased plan, which was estimated to be $3,589 in 2013.

So, in an effort to cover the out-of-pocket costs which millions of Americans will have to pay, the government has been focusing on the affordability of the ObamaCare insurance plans. Moreover, the Affordable Care Act ensured the availability of tax credits to cover the insurance premiums of individuals whose income annually is four times the poverty level, i.e. $45,960 per person. Even the subsidies that cover some of the deductibles available for individuals earning 2.5 more than the poverty level ($28,725 per person) are only offered for the holders of the pricey silver plan.

The Alternative Solution

As private insurers have priced the deductibles around $6,350 per person per annum and $12,700 per family per annum, it’s apparent that they are only complying with the ACA part which states that coverage should ensure essential services like routine preventative care. However, so far, ObamaCare hasn’t been able to control how much insurance companies could charge. Because of this little fact alone, many individuals and families have decided against going for ObamaCare.

Instead, people whose medical costs are frequent and usually high are resorting to comparing the price for procedures in an effort to save money. Some would rather pay the $75 fine linked to paying cash to their physicians rather than taking out a health care policy and paying monthly premiums only to be further burdened by their ailments and more expenses.

As you can see, ObamaCare may not really help in ensuring access to quality and affordable health care to the masses. Therefore, make the right decision and avoid high out-of-pocket expenses by comparing the costs of medical procedures and select the best one for you and your family. You probably do the same while shopping, so why not your own health?

Find prices for medical services and procedures in your area: yempl.com

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in Compare Medical Rates / Healthcare Costs / ObamaCare / Patients 0 comments