I freelance, but I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to afford private health insurance since I was in my 20s.
I thought my premiums–north of $7,100 per year now, and I’m single with no children [EDIT: And no health issues]–were pretty ridiculous, especially because I was on the absolute cheapest option my plan offered (no dental, big deductibles, etc.). Still, this was real insurance, not junk insurance, and there weren’t much in the way of better options out there (I checked).
Then I got a note from my provider that because of Obamacare, my plan would have to change. And that I would get another note with the new offerings soon.
I still haven’t received the new offerings, but I checked with another provider to see what they would sell me; its a safe bet that their deal will be pretty similar to my current provider’s. So let’s check them out.
The new plan only has one offering that’s even as expensive as my current plan (the cheapest, remember), and that covers pretty much everything. The cheapest offering, which is similar to my current one, is $4320 per year.
So, in the post-Obamacare dystopia, I can save almost $3,000 per year for similar insurance, or get much better insurance at the same price.
Let that sink in. Under the Affordable Care Act, my costs are nearly halved.
Of course, that’s the situation in New York; I don’t know how things are going in other states. Still, New York is a big state, and a lot of other people will be seeing that sort of improvement, *without* subsidies.
And yes, I don’t know what my current plan will be offering. But if it’s not at least as good, I can switch. Imagine that–healthcare that you can switch without worrying that if something goes wrong, and you lose coverage for a minute, you’ll never get it again for the rest of your life.
One last thing: There’s a pie chart showing Obamacare’s winners and losers making the rounds (one source here):
On that chart, people in my situation don’t count as winners. We fall into the “no real effect” or “potential loser” categories.
So yes, Obamacare is a freaking Rube Goldberg machine, and single-payer would be simpler, more just, and cheaper. But at least in New York, at least for people like me, *it has nearly halved premiums.*
That ain’t nothing.
I was gobsmacked at the price you pay. In Australia, my wife AND I are on a single health insurance plan which (before a ludicrous government subsidy that was used to pork-barrel votes in my opinion) is almost a complete top of the line package (optical, dental, GPs, obstetrics, ambulance cover, secondary therapy like physio, limited alternative cover and some lifestyle costs cover if you have med certificates from a GP stating you are to do a certain amount of exercise in a week for example) and even before the subsidy, ours is about $5500AUD or around $4900 pa. I’d expect the reverse to be true, we’re in a smaller market with supposedly less competitors. It seems there is another US market-space with inadequate competition.
Yeah, it’s ridiculous. The sad thing is that if we had a single-payer system that was as efficient as any other industrialized country’s, we could fund it entirely out of existing taxes (between Medicare, Medicaid, the subsidies for Obamacare, military and veterans’ care, tax breaks for private insurance, the Indian Health Service, and health insurance for government employees, we pay enough to entitle us to a good system.)
I’m grtuafel you made the post. It’s cleared the air for me.