bigtruckguy3500 said:
What do you mean by Obamacare should be a last resort? Do you mean using the healthcare exchange site to purchase many of the same insurance available through other private insurers? Or that you can find private insurance plans that cover more than the ACA minimum by going through an agent?
First let me say we live in College Station because that might matter. Sometimes health insurance is strange here. I've seen times where there was no network pediatrician in town. I've had to get exceptions for out of network because the in network provider that was going to insert the tubes into our son's ears worked at a facility that was out of network and insurance wanted us to use a facility in Brenham he didn't have a contract with. We actually induced our second child on December 31 (it was her due date) because effective Jan 1 the only pediatrician office in town was leaving my employer insurance. We moved my wife to Bryan ISD but they told her if there were complications during delivery those would be excluded. It can be difficult here sometimes.
I've looked at the exchange a couple of times but not recently. First time was with my then 19 year old son who was on his own and not in college so not eligible to be on my insurance. He didn't make much money then so he qualified for a heavy subsidy which made it appealing financially. In the end he decided to go uninsured because the TWO plans were poor. HMO plans with a whopping two primary doctors in network and those doctors had bad reviews regarding things like speaking English. There was no urgent care in network, the closest one was in Magnolia. Even at the heavy subsidy they were not worth what he was going to pay for them.
Second time was for me and my wife about four years ago. We're self employed and she was leaving CSISD so had to be on the same plan as me which meant I wanted to shop more. Same exact experience as with our son. Poor plans with very small networks of doctors that aren't well reviewed. Remember that whole "gonna save $2500 and you get to keep your doctor" nonsense? Called BS way before it passed.
Obamacare as a law was an unmitigated disaster for self employed people. Easily the worst law in my lifetime from that perspective. My premiums quadrupled while the risk I took on went up 30%, all within the first less than five years. Prior to that law passing I had over 20 plans to choose from with low premiums and reasonable exposure. My last year pre-Obamacare I had a Blue Cross HDHP with a $5000 maximum for $130/month. Less than five years later the maximum was $6500 and the premiums were $526. That was the last year I bought compliant insurance.
What the $0 mandate created was non-compliant plans where the consumer could actually choose what they wanted their plan to feature. High or low deductibles, big or small networks. Up front risk or back end with annual or lifetime limits. Obamacare killed competition until the $0 mandate brought some of it back. Biden killed catastrophic plans but still there is at least some competition remaining.
