Health insurance cost for those buying their own

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

For those of you that are buying your own health insurance (no medicare, no employer insurance, etc.), how much will your premium be in 2016 and how much was it in 2015?

Mine is going to be $280 in 2016 and was $216 in 2015. It was $75 per month before the ACA. :frowning:

Is there an end in sight? I’m seriously thinking of dropping insurance and dodging the tax penalty. Even though I never go to the doctor, I can pay for a doctor visit or two out of my pocket for less than the price of one month’s insurance premium. Big risk of course is if I get sick or hurt and wind up in the hospital.
Forgot to note, I’m a male in my 40s living in Virginia.

#2

My daughter’s almost doubled after the ACA, and will go up about $60 on Friday. I think it’s close to $300 a month now.

#3

Mine has gone up, although not as much as either poster’s, but I have better coverage.

#4

This is the first year for mine (2016) and it will be $150-$200 monthly depending on if I go with a bronze or silver plan. The last time I thought about buying insurance on my own was about a decade ago when I was unemployed. It would have been $700 monthly :eek: under COBRA. Ouch.

How do you dodge the tax penalty when it’s taken out of your federal tax by the IRS (as I understand it)? :confused:

#5

Wow, how did you get $75 per month insurance? I took a three month sabbatical in 2000, and my individual HMO insurance policy was $280 per month, and required me to document every doctor’s appointment I’d had in the previous ten years. Fortunately for me, that wasn’t very many. They declined to insure my wife at all, because she’d had a prescription to Claritin two years previously.

#6

Mine went down. $187 last year, $119 this year. Lower deductible too.

#7

The ACA has made crap like that illegal now.

#8

Great Jehosophat!

Mine is $388 a month! And it’s through an employer! (A very very small employer, true, but not an individual policy.) That’s DOWN from over $400, because I switched to an HMO. No maternity.

I’d be doing a happy dance with $216.

#9

My insurance (provided thru work) has gotten steadily more expensive over the last few years, while the deductibles and co-insurances have gotten steadily higher. ACA can kiss my ass :mad:

#10

Is your insurance actually getting more expensive because of the ACA, or because your employer is providing less of a subsidy while blaming the ACA?

My insurance has gotten more expensive, while the deductibles and co-pays have gotten higher, for the last fifteen years at least, with the largest increases occurring before the ACA was anything but a pipe dream. YMMV.

#11

Yeah same here. That’s really cheap.

People seem to be under the belief health insurance is increasing because the ACA. Rates were predicted to sky rocket even before the ACA was being debated, if the ACA didn’t pass we’d still being seeing the rate increases.

#12

That’s like the whole point of insurance.

#13

Mine went up 30% one year way before ACA.

#14

The ACA was supposed to decrease the average families cost by about $2500 per year??

#15

Well it didn’t, you can vote that guy out of office for lying to you.

Doesn’t change the fact that ACA or no health care costs are increasing. ACA or no premiums will go up.

#16

I don’t imagine my vote one way or the other can keep that guy in office. And yes, health care costs are only increasing. It was a predictable result of the ACA.

#17

It was also a predictable result of not passing the ACA.

#18

I’m not sure I buy into this on an individual level. Care to provide evidence?

#19

Has there ever been a year in which average individual insurance costs went down or even remained the same? My insurance costs have increased consistently every year before and after the ACA.

I’m not going to provide evidence the predictable would have occurred.

#20

Prior to ACA: Infinite cost - I was “uninsurable” and lived overseas for 12 years to be able to buy insurance… insurance that I never made any claims on. Much of that time was without any sort of residency. I would move to a new country every 90 days so as to not become an illegal alien. Thank goodness that my job was internet-based.

2015: $290
2016: $330