Why we love the Affordable Care Act

[patoadam]

We love the Affordable Care Act. Thanks to Obamacare, we will spend $21,621.60 less for health insurance this year, and we have vastly better coverage.

Here are the boring but important details. In 2013, we spent $36,023.40 in health insurance premiums for our family of three. This year, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we will spend $14,401.80, and we could have spent less. We did not choose the least expensive insurance available through the Affordable Care Act, and we are not eligible for a government subsidy.

Why were our insurance premiums so high in 2013? We were trapped in our expensive health insurance plan because my wife is a cancer survivor and I am self-employed. As premiums rose from year to year, anyone who was healthy enough to qualify for less expensive insurance did. The pool of insured people got sicker and sicker, so premiums rose higher and higher.

In 2013, our per-person out-of-pocket maximum was $25,000. This year, it is $6,350. In 2013, we paid more than $25,000 in medical expenses that were not covered by insurance. So far this year, we have paid $295. Our total savings for all of 2014 thanks to lower premiums and better coverage could easily hit $40,000.

We are telling the world more than we really want to about our finances because we think it is important to counteract the misleading stories of people who say they had to pay more for insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. Did you hear the one about Bette from Spokane, who said she had to pay $700 a month more for health insurance? She didn’t get her new insurance from the healthcare.gov website; she went back to her old insurer and switched to the most expensive plan they had available.

The bottom line is that nobody who is eligible for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act will have to pay more than 9.5% of his or her income for insurance, and most people will pay much less. As I type this, there is still time to apply.

Comments

[artbeco.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, Alan. It's good to hear. We're still trying to get enrolled; we've got the boys now but Paul and I are still in limbo. Hoping to get it resolved sooner rather than later... Glad to hear your family is going to be so much better off. :) *hugs*

[patoadam]

Good luck!

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I'll start by saying, that's great, I'm happy that it's helping a lot of people and that over 6 million people have signed up, and I support it 100%.

In general, though, I am opposed to the principle of money intended to save lives being filtered through for-profit corporations whose motivation is to delay services and deny claims in order to improve the bottom line. I do not like it that states even have an option to deny portions of the program to their citizens. And I still think we need single-payor universal health care.

I also still think Medicare should get past the 1965 compromise and stop being an 80/20 mix of public/private.

My own peculiar circumstances put me in a rather precarious position.

When I took early retirement in 2010, my share of health insurance premiums was about $200 a month. It's currently $296. This is really good health insurance that covers everything, with copays but no out-of-pocket to meet. My retirement income is around $1800 a month, and will go down to $1700 a month at some point when I use up my life insurance refund. My mortgage is currently at $1000 per month. Utilities are around $300 not counting phone. Anything extra I need, like food, entertainment, cable TV, etc. is paid for by eBay sales. In 3 years and 4 months this will all change when I get Social Security and do the reverse mortgage I'm contemplating. Until then, that $296 a month is a huge chunk of my income - far more than the indicated percentage. Last year, in April, I was in bad shape financially and had to stop my health insurance in order to get more income for living expenses. I relied on a state program called CICP for my care and medications during that time, but was at risk for losing my house if I had a major medical expense at a non-public hospital.

This year, I have 3 things: 1. The health insurance through my retirement plan. I signed up for that again effective January 1. 2. CICP, which at this point is free but doesn't actually do anything unless I have to cancel my health insurance again. 3. ACA bronze insurance, through Kaiser. This is costing me $1.37 a month for my share of the premium. The subsidy the government is paying Kaiser is over $300 a month. I have not used this at all, and probably won't, which means the government is paying Kaiser over $3600 a year for nothing, for my socalled insurance. The out-of-pocket amount on that insurance is more than my normal total health care expenses for a year, so it's effectively the same as having no insurance at all, except that preventative care is free. I call that "don't get sick" insurance.

It would help me considerably if there was some way to use the ACA subsidy to pay for my retirement insurance premium. This is not, apparently, going to happen. I wrote to my congressional representative about this and got back a brochure telling me about the ACA that really didn't respond to what I had to say.

Meanwhile, I'm paying the $1.37 in case I need to cancel my real insurance again. I still won't use it unless I'm hospitalized in a non-public hospital and the bill exceeds my out-of-pocket for the year. So, in theory, it could put me in major debt but at least keep me, if I could magically pull $6-7,000 out of the sky after being hospitalized, from losing my house.

[patoadam]

Yes, I agree with you about the advantages of public health insurance.

Good luck with your finances!

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Marx had a very simple principle that works for this kind of thing: from each according to ability; to each according to need. In the early days of America, if the neighbor's house burned down, everyone would work together to build a new one. We've kind of lost that. Or replaced it with insurance companies. Perhaps profit motivates people to increase production. In my opinion, however, the thing we've lost - the sense of community and empathy for one another - was a far greater motivator, and replacing that with capitalism was like replacing barn-raisings with fire insurance. Not as good.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Since Jan 1, I've been insured for the first time in a decade. I do get a subsidy, so I pay 80-some bucks a month. I just paid a $30 copay for a routine doctor's visit that would otherwise cost about $180. And, well, I could trip and break a bone without going bankrupt.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

That's another reason I'm signed up even though it doesn't help me much. The subsidy money goes to Kaiser, a non profit, which makes it tax money that's going for health care for other people and not for murdering strangers overseas.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this.

[eintx.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm glad!
After you posted about all these health expenses some time ago I worried, and it's so good that things are getting easier.