I just lost my job on July 31st and am paying COBRA - and trust me when I say Louie the Icepick has better rates on his gambling loans than COBRA charges for continued coverage!
Damned straight I am in!
Currently paying a few pennies under $1000/month for COBRA coverage for SO and myself - just checked, and it looks like will be paying between $250-$300 for the same Obamacare coverage as soon as it kicks in.
Ask me again why I am happy about Obamacare…
Again, I am not going to assert expertise, but do check that link - for Texas, you will be directed to the Federal Exchange. The base policy (they are named simply enough - think precious metals) is the Bronze, and appears to be free to those with incomes under Federal Poverty Level (the subsidy is 100%).
For God’s sake check it out and have an application filled out and ready to submit if you do end up on COBRA.
In descending price::
Platinum
Gold
Silver
Bronze
You really can’t afford not to have insurance when all it takes is an hour’s work to get it.
And, you’ll get MUCH better care when you show that card than you will if you answer “none” to the admitting desk’s “What kind of insurance do you have?”
Subsidies range form 100% - 0%, depending on policy and income level.
Even if you don’t qualify for a subsidy, iif you are unable to find private insurance, I suspect this is much cheaper than the current “sickies pool” some states operate.
Has anyone now getting their insurance form such a program compared rates?
I and my 4 year old daughter are covered under Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma but my wife was rejected for a pre- existing condition. We are pregnant with twins and have no recourse but to pay cash for the whole deal. We moved back to Oklahoma from Colorado and the only high risk pool insurance in Oklahoma requires you have residency for at least a year.
Obama Care means the world to our family. I’m an independent contractor and have to buy insurance in the free market. The options for coverage with a pre-existing condition are, pay $1000 a month for one person or find someone else. The only problem is there is no one else. The exchange and the tid bit of no exclusion for pre-existing conditions are a life saver. We can afford to pay for the pregnancy and as soon as the babies are born they’re under my insurance, but to have no recourse for routine doctors visits or ER emergencies is crazy.
We make too much for state subsidized insurance(which we don’t need) but hardly anyone makes enough to cash roll something major. We are a normal family and would pay into a pool and hope nothing goes wrong as anyone would, but to be told by several insurance companies that there is nothing we can do… what I’m saying is it’s better to hope for the best with a safety net(insurance) than putting hope against financial ruin.
Obama Care is a good thing
I’m counting down the days until Oct. 1. I work in state government, but my job classification isn’t eligible for state insurance. I have access to a crappy plan that requires around $2000 out of pocket (between premiums and deductibles) before they’ll even look at a claim; it’s cheaper to pay a doctor out of pocket.
My only question is how easy will it be to drop an Obamacare plan if my classification changes and I become eligible for state insurance?
The poll needs a “not sure yet and won’t know until I can compare prices and coverage” option.
Mea culpa.
I was originally thinking of a I’ll wait until…
But I’d had have to put in a largist number of “to see if it works”, “to see what options are available to me”, “until I crunch numbers”.
That “If I can” was an attempt to short-cut the list.
Maybe we can add the caveat that “Can” also includes any conditions which need to be met?
If I could afford it, I’d keep my current until I can no longer avoid surgery, but that may be years out before any insurance would cover it (the argument is "you’re doing fine with pills for the pain; you don’t need surgery).
The scary part is the kidneys. Medicare explicitly cover “end stage renal failure”, whatever that means. At the least it should pick up dialysis and/or transplant.
The Q is the $2500/week drug which might be required short of “end stage”.
If you want a bizarre bit of medicine, look up the:
“erythropoiesis stimulating agents”
One of them begins with the ovaries of Chinese hamsters.
Who in the world started looking at rodent ovaries as medicine? Genentech, which owns all 3 of the drugs to date.
And I remember when Genentech was founded - up until then, I’m guessing life was short, even with dialysis.
We have an employee-subsidized plan, so I don’t plan on enrolling.
My small business consists of my partner and me, and that’s it. We cover him and his wife and daughter and me. I’m on an HDHP plan that has an HSA and he has a traditional plan, and the company pays out the nose for all of it. It goes up like $200/year, too.
The company pays 100% of insurance for both of us.
I have no idea what we all qualify for or how the business could save money. I’ll be waiting until after October to check it out.
Not here. My company used to have a “Cadillac plan.” They covered everything, 100%, no employee cost at all. This year it changed to a HSA type plan, and I’ll end up paying a couple thousand a year. The change was blamed on Obamacare, but I’d be willing to bet any amount of money it would have happened in a year or two, anyway – health care costs are just rising too fast.
So I won’t be going onto an exchange plan (the current employer plan is still better than 99% of insurance plans), but even if my new costs really are because of Obamacare, I don’t begrudge the small cost: society’s better when everybody’s covered, and the ACA is at least a step toward joining the rest of the world in getting that done.
I’ll have to check, but I assume that my monthly contribution to my employer-supplied insurance is less than paying the full cost of a pool plan. Also, everyone in the area is used to dealing with our plan, so I shouldn’t have to put up with someone else’s learning curve.
Yeah… the poll seems to be written from the assumption that everyone has an ideological position.
It’s also making a mistake by thinking that some insurance plans are “Obamacare” and that some plans are not. Obamacare rewrote the rules for the entire health insurance/health care industry, whether a policy is bought through an exchange or not.
I own my own business and pay for health insurance myself. Rates go up every year and benefits change every year. So this year, I’ll be doing the same thing I do every year: comparing options and prices and deciding which policy is the best fit for me.
I’m currently on an employer provided plan.
My employer was paying approximately $525 a month and we just got notified that the rate will go to $600. It’s not a great plan, the copays are really high especially for medication.
I just used the plan estimator on the New York State insurance exchange. For kicks, I put in Platinum as the coverage level. I thought I could get some recreational outrage over some “heart attack” pricing
The estimator had 5 levels of coverage
Platinum
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Catastrophic
OH WOW - There are Platinum plans for as low as $450 a month and the bulk of them are between $500 and $550.
Catastrophic plans ( the cheapest) start at $180 and about half of them are under $250.
Oddly enough, the company we are currently insured with is the outlier on the exchange, with most of their plans costing about twice what the other companies are asking.
While I still have lots of research to do, if these rates are any indication I’ll probably drop the company plan in exchange for an extra $500 a month ( which my company will do it I ask).
I must say I have always been a huge skeptic about these exchanges as I am used to seeing the cheapest individual plans starting at over $1000 a month and I never believed, until now, that the insurance via the exchanges would be truly affordable.
But it looks like I was wrong.
New York may be something of an outlier. They already had a bunch of requirements for coverages, many of which the ACA now mandates be cheaper. I’m not a New York resident, but if I were, I’d sure be looking at the new coverages.
Can someone explain to me like I’m two? (I get confused by this stuff easily)
I’m a New York City resident.
I’m within 200% of the Federal Poverty guideline.
I’m a single working adult.
No current health insurance (I am on an employer-provided plan that will pay in event of emergency hospitalization, but its not really health insurance).
The NY Health Plan Marketplace website is frustrating and doesn’t seem to have a lot of info. What will happen? Will I need to sign up for health insurance?
Sorry for any confusion. The ACA simply mandates that everyone have certain level of insurance (no, I don’t know the qualifications).
I’m guessing most existing, employer-based plans are ACA-compliant, which means those covered are “under Obamacare” or “Obamacare-compliant”
My (not-so-greatly-framed) question is about those planning to purchase their insurance through an ACA Exchange - State, if your State has opted in, the Federal Exchange if it hasn’t.
I am VERY interested how all the opposition of a few years ago has played out. This board isn’t the best choice for finding die-hard opposition, but I did want that option.
I did short-term contracts - the money was good, but I never had employer-paid insurance.
And. after all the noise about how "the rates will be MUCH higher than good-old Free Enterprise would be, the rates, even if you don’t qualify for subsidy, are much better than anything I could get.
For a giggle, I might see if I can get a quote for 80/20 as an individual (roughly what I had, at $400/mo before I became sick) with my preconditions. I lost tract of it when it passed $800/mo seven of eight years ago.
I plan on buying my ACA policy from the same company (Blue Shield of California) which writes my current policy. They are approved to write policies in a couple of CA’s 5 regions.
Unless you are one who will never, ever have anything to do with the plan, please check out the number - it just may be the cheapest real insurance out there for you.
Well, my lack of Web-Fo strikes again - the actual calculator is (it seems) currently a link to download something called
“Tax Credit and Premium Rate Estimator.Updated.xlsm”
My computer can’t do an xlsm. And that line is a copy and paste, and didn’t show up as a link, so whatever.
But, speaking of CA (and I can’t imagine NY being all that different). look for an application to fill out and submit.
Poke around NY State of Health (the NY Exchange) and see if there is a number to call of a chat line to get a working calculator
Here’s a snap of CA’s overview of benefits and costs:
Am currently between jobs, and until employer-paid insurance returns to my family, we’re looking forward to Oct. 1.
This calculator is not specifically for the state of New York, but the general subsidy calculations apply to the whole country. Plugging in some WAGs based on your info, it looks like you might qualify for subsidies that will let you buy a “bronze” plan for about $900 per year, or a “silver” plan for $1450 per year.
However, your employer insurance might decide to offer you an “affordable” plan that meets new standards. That new employer plan would be better, but as long as it costs you less than 8% of your income (approximately $1800) you wouldn’t qualify for subsidized coverage. I think. The “affordable” definition is one of the tricky bits of this mess, since the law didn’t really define it adequately, and it’s up to bureaucrats to set the final rules.
Not for me. I have insurance and its pretty decent.
I’ll be sticking with my employer’s plan. It sucks (lousy high deductible plans,) but it’s cheaper than even the cheapest option my state has listed on it’s Health Connect website. Though to be fair, I haven’t looked into whether I get discounts or tax credits or whatever, but I’m guessing my income is a little too high to qualify.
However, it will be interesting to see what happens in a few years, since my state (\Vermont) is, in theory, going to enact Single payer Healthcare for the state in a couple years.