I have to buy my own insurance and I just bought a plan off the NYS Market Place. I’m a 32 year old male who is buying coverage for just myself.
It’s $421 a month where I just send them money every month and they don’t cover anything. I’m somewhat joking. It’s a $4,000 deductible and somewhere around $14K max out of pocket costs. So I am paying $421 a month to avoid the risk of going bankrupt if medical expenses add up to more than $14k.
How is everyone else buying their health insurance?
I just renewed my health insurance for 2018. New rate: Approx $1600 per month for a family of three for Silver tier. Our deductible and max is somewhat lower than yours.
ETA: this is an off-market plan in California. We make too much to qualify for a subsidy.
I’m pretty damned poor – was on Medi-Cal for a while, but got a job just barely too good to allow that any longer. I do get the subsidy, so, for $550/month insurance, I pay $120.
I figure I’m looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, now that Congress has taken away the mandate. Once my rates rise to $400, I’ll have to drop out and live under no coverage at all. It’s that or live on the streets.
My sister retired early to care for our elderly parents. For several years, she was unable to get any health insurance. With ACA she was able to get crappy insurance at a high cost. Last year it was $900 per month, this year it’s $1200. She definitely worries about the future.
I’m on Medicare.
My monthly payment is very high and it’s going up about 25% next year. Let’s just say that it’s so high, I’m actually liking the fact that I’ll be old enough to get medicare in a few years. Woo-hoo for geeserhood!!!
In 2017, I paid $213.00 monthly and have $2200 deductible. In 2018 I will pay $244.00 and have a $2240 deductible.
That is for Medicare, MediGap and Part D for me. My wife pays the same.
When I started Medicare in 2014, I paid $187.50 monthly, so my premiums are rising more than 5% yearly. I expect this to increase more rapidly in the coming years.
To add to my post.
Since 2014 my SS income has risen by 4%. My costs for Medicare Part B has risen by 28%, MediGap by 28% and Part D (drugs) by 59%
I am insured through my job but still pay about $500 per month for me and my spouse.
Like Butters, my insurance is thru my Fed retirement and it’s just over $500/mo for my spouse and me. The government pays at least half again over as much as I pay, so there’s no way I could afford it otherwise.
I’ll be 65 in Jan 2019, but my husband is 3 years younger, so I’ll have to continue this coverage until he comes of age. And it’ll only get more expensive.
I’m going to be paying a little under $600 a month for a plan with a 2K deductible. This is an NYS exchange plan although I purchased it through a broker.
Ive downgraded my plan this year to reduce my premiums. My old plan had no deductible and 2K out of pocket max it also had great features like 5 free psychotherapy sessions and unlimited sessions at $15 a pop after that. And they offered the same deal for physical therapy. It was worth it last year because I had 2 outpatient surgeries (cataract) + a mysterious condition that had me running around to different doctors for a couple of months… I paid $775 a month for that plan last year. It was going to go up to $840 ,a modest increase actually, but I elected to go for a cheaper. Plan. My plan for this year is to not get sick.
But I would like to remind the OP that you should get the benefit of the insurance company’s lower negotiated rates even if you haven’t met your deductible. The retail price of a PCP visit at my doctors office is about $400, but for insured patients that rate is cut to around $150 if you are insured but haven’t met your deductible.
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I’ve got an Affordable Care Act silver plan. The list price for my wife and myself is pretty darn high, around $2,600 a month, but it’s heavily subsidized to the tune of $1,929 per month, so not so bad. While the deductible is high, $5,000, that doesn’t apply to preventative care, which is 100% covered, and the prescription coverage is really good as well, the whole family out of pocket for 2017 worked out to be $2,900, and that includes 143 bucks for some out of network stuff.
I suppose I could be a little abashed about getting such a large subsidy when I could afford to pay more, but I didn’t make the rules, I’m just getting along under them, and in 2015, the last year I worked, I paid over $35,000 in federal income taxes, so there you have it.
Not to make this political, but I think anecdotes like this show the elephant in the room about the ACA: It’s a heavy burden to essentially require a single person or small family to buy the monetary equivalent of a secondary Toyota each year, every year, just to be covered - and even then that coverage still requires you to pay a big chunk in deductibles or max-out-of-pockets.
Single 38yo female in Ohio. $421 a month with a $4500 deductible and and HSA.
I’m diabetic so I’ll hit that deductible by about September and will have 3-4 months of “full coverage.” Before that basically nothing is covered but yes I will have slightly lower costs thanks to negotiates prices.
Full disclosure, I have my own business and my business is able to give me a stipend for the insurance and my HSA (up to $3500). So I don’t technically pay for it myself but what the business spends comes right out of its ability to pay me more so samey-samey.
I was paying around $450/month for an individual policy in 2008 before Obamacare. That went up to nearly $800/month in 2017 before I finally went on Medicare.
Anyone who thinks the ACA drove up insurance prices is mistaken. Unless your health insurance was paid for by an employer or union, or you were carried on your spouse’s insurance, health insurance has been basically unaffordable for individuals since some time in the 1980s.
Too many variables to ever compare apples to apples, but I’m in PA, don’t qualify for subsidies, and three years ago bought policies for my husband and minor daughter through our insurance agent for a total of $522/month for a Silver plan. They had that plan for two years until my husband got a job with an employer who would cover them (my employer covers just me). There weren’t any major injuries or illnesses during that time, but they did benefit from negotiated prices for the occasional ear infection, sprained ankle, and vaccinations and physicals were 100% covered, etc. ACA requires health insurance policies to cover a LOT that they didn’t have to before.
The mandate isn’t the same thing as the subsidy. AFAIK your share of the premium would stay at $120 if your income stayed the same, even if premiums skyrocket because of the loss of the mandate (although that could change the political viability of the system).
2017, my wife and I each paid over $1100 per month. We could not qualify for ACA.
2018, we are back on ACA. $100 per month COVERS US BOTH.
What a racket.
For 2018 my ACA premiums went up by around $450 per month for a couple, but the subsidy went up by more than that, so my net costs for 2018 actually drop by around $50 a month to around $660 a couple. The subsidy is based on a household income less than $57,840.
As much as I agree with you on ACA not being the cause of the price increases, I can’t agree on what you say about health insurance being unaffordable for individuals since the 1980s. Mr. Athena and I were self-employed from about 2002 to 2013 or so, and bought our own insurance. Expensive? Hell yes. Premiums go up 50-100% every year? You bet. Unaffordable? Nope. I guess had we stayed on that plan long enough it would have become very, very pricey, but during the time I was on it it was not unaffordable.
We’re self employed, so we buy off the marketplace, and we have to speculate how much we’re going to make since we’re a seasonal business. We’re still sort of in “start-up” mode, so 2018 could be an incremental growth year for us, or it could be a banner year. We estimated “incremental.” That being said, for our silver plan, we’ll be paying about $46/month for our family of four, with a family deductible of $500 and an out-of-pocket maximum of $1350. We got a real nice subsidy on a good plan.
If we start showing signs of more money coming in in the summer, we’ll have to make adjustments with the marketplace, and we’ll likely see our premiums go up.