ACA premiums to more than double without enhanced subsidies
Some things you didn’t know:
- Everyone on a “group insurance” plan (e.g. employer insurance) was already protected from pre-existing condition exclusions since HIPPA in 1996. HIPPA, however, did not protect the small individual market (about 6% of insured then). A majority of US states enacted their own protections. Thus, the ACA’s pre-X protections applied to a small part of the insurance market. Most people were already protected.
- The ACA has its own form of pre-existing condition exclusion in the form of a waiting period. If you are uninsured on January 30th, then get diagnosed with a medical condition, you cannot sign up for insurance until January 1st of the following year. This is known as a pre-existing condition waiting period.
- The ACA merged, ultimately, all 35 state-run “high risk insurance pools” having very expensive patients, into the tiny individual market. In addition, 25% of the “uninsured” in 2014 had pre-existing conditions. Some portion of those ended up in the tiny individual market. The effect was to turn the individual market into a high risk/high-cost insurance pool.
- How high cost? On our last year on the ACA, a “Bronze” plan (lowest level) cost us about $2,000 per month (if unsubsidized) with a $19,200 per year family deductible. That means we are on the hook, out of pocket, for major costs up to $19,200 per year. This is not the type of insurance you are accustomed to with a group insurance policy. Instead, the ACA became very expensive “catastrophic” only coverage and nothing like the sales pitch made back in 2010 when the ACA was passed.
- Even with subsidies, the deductibles are so high as to make the insurance coverage worthless for anything but a major catastrophic medical event.
- THE ACA HAS BEEN A TOTAL FAILURE BUT NO ONE IN CONGRESS CARES AND NO ONE THERE WILL MAKE ANY SERIOUS ATTEMPT TO FIX IT.
