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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
NP here and I agree. I finally got onto healthcare.gov on Friday and was able to shop plans, and ... yikes. And I know the cost of individual insurance well, as many people who have employer-subsidized coverage do not. For all intents and purposes, a bronze plan IS a catastrophic plan, no matter what they call it. Same deal with most of the silver plans. Even the gold plans have more cost-sharing than what people are used to. We are seriously asking people to put 10%+ of their take-home income into health care when most people are already feeling squeezed even without that expense? I am a lifelong Democrat and was always a huge supporter of the ACA but now that I see what is on offer, I am really disappointed and skeptical that this could possibly work. For my family, even $1000 of medical expenses above premiums in a year is a huge fucking deal, much less a $10k deductible, which would basically bankrupt us. We do not qualify for subsidies. Because we are basically healthy and don't utilize much care, paying premiums is essentially throwing money down a rat hole -- we're not getting anything out of it and we'll never see it again. We tolerate this for our $200/mo life insurance bill, our $150/mo car insurance bill, and our $100/mo homeowners insurance bill, but another $800-1000/mo (cost of bronze to silver plans for my family) is just TOO MUCH to throw away on the off chance that one of us might get cancer or hit by a car, with finances being so tight. We'll do it because we're risk averse that way, but I resent every single penny of it. I agree with David Goldhill that medical insurance should be for catastrophic purposes only and that there should be a functional market for other types of health care and people should budget for routine health expenses. I wouldn't mind paying $100-200/mo into a catastrophic policy and saving the rest of the money in an HSA to pay out of pocket for yearly physicals and an occasional ear infection or what have you. Prices would come down if there was real competition among providers. And yes, doctors wouldn't make as much money. But everyone else would have a much better quality of life. [/quote]

What type of insurance coverage do you currently have PP?  It sounds like you don't currently have employer-subsidized insurance?   And how much are you currently paying for that coverage?[/quote]

We do have employer-sponsored coverage at the moment. It is a small business so their rates are pretty high -- small business rates are comparable to individual rates as I understand it. The employer subsidizes my husband's portion of the rate, we pay for the rest of the family. The total cost for the policy (an Anthem PPO in Virginia) for our family is $1700/mo, we pay just over $1200/mo of that. It is a pretty comprehensive policy with no deductible and 20% coinsurance for some things, copays for other things. Since we don't use much care in a typical year, we would prefer to have a higher deductible (but not $10k high) and an HSA and pay lower premiums, but the exchange rates are not low enough to make taking the risk of having to pay the deductible worth it. But I wonder about people who actually don't have access to an employer policy and who will be forced to accept a higher deductible than they can afford. I know that if we had a $10k deductible, I would be very anxious about the possibility of something happening. The out of pocket exposure (which I think is set by law to max out at $12,700 for a family) is really high. I just expected/hoped to be able to get something with a medium-high deductible ($2-5k family) and otherwise decent coverage for less than $900/mo and that just isn't where the rates are. Considering that we paid $600/mo for a no-deductible comprehensive Kaiser policy for the whole family as recently as 2010, it's disappointing. [/quote]

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