Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium Rates

[haele]

166. A 63-year old single making 60K under the Covered CA "silver" plan pays $679 a month.

Not $1358. For complete coverage that has a few co-pays that are in the median of co-pay costs.
Single 63-year old making $20K a year pays only $85 a month.
Single 63 year old making $40K pays $317 a month.
And there's the federal tax credits, which I haven't figured out yet just in observation for all the categories except for single over $60K; you'd have to go into the various tables to find out what they are.

A couple, with the individual aged 63, spouse 60, and household income is over 60K does end up paying $1305 a month with a federal tax credit of $828 (for two) dropping it down to the equivalent of $475 a month (but you don't get that money until the end of the year). If the spouse is under 60, the premium goes down to $1278, but the credits drop it down to $475.
Add one dependant (child or adult) as covered under the ACA to the couple above, while the up-front premium goes up to $1533, the tax credit increases to drop the cost down to $475 a month. Add another dependent, and it drops down to $405 a month.

A couple (age didn't count when I ran the numbers) with a household income of $36K - pretty much the median income in California - pays $223 a month in premiums after the federal tax credits. Add a child, and the federal tax credits drops the premium down to $157 a month.

The federal tax credits are based on income and members in the household, not age, and are meant to balance out the difference in premiums by age and number of members covered.

Go to the link and find out - if someone is telling you it's still $1358, they're either lying about the CA exchange or they're telling you what the max the insurance companies are going to be able to offer to meet the equivalent care on the open market.

http://www.coveredca.com/calculating_the_cost.html

Now, if we aren't discussing California's plan under the ACA, I apologize for the above comment; that's the problem when there's cross-country discussions.

Having looked at "quotes" from companies, it is clear that free market costs are not affordable to the average person. This is a major problem with the ACA - however - and this is the big "however", no matter what state you live in, there is a federal tax credit in the ACA that even people who's income is up to $60K can get to offset their monthly premiums, so the 63 year old who has been quoted $1358 in a particular state is going to be eligible for some tax credits to offset that cost.
The current ACA system has subsidies and cost containment to attempt to keep medical costs below 12% of their income, which does suck, but is far, far better than what was available before, and if this is going to be an incremental step towards a single payer/rate-administration plan, it is better than what we had seen before.

Before, your only other non-employer-provided based option (disregarding eligibility for Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare/VA) was to suck it up and negotiate with an insurance agent that $1358 a month premium with no federal credits, or go for a cheaper "catastrophic" plan that didn't cover most doctor's visits or lab procedures, or wait until your health got really bad and
A) you suffer through trying to work, take care of "life business" and treat the issue yourself for a period of time until it got to be too much and you (or a family member without coverage) ended up in the emergency room - much worse off and affected for the rest of your life by something that could have been caught early with regular doctor's visits and taken care of relatively inexpensively, or
B) died younger than you would have from something that could have been caught earlier and taken care of, or
C ) ended up bankrupt from treating something in the emergency room that could have been caught earlier and taken care of.

Unfortunately, the ACA is not "health care", it's access to health care, no matter what they call it. And that's another discussion about the values of the electorate and elected lawmakers, and how those values are imposed on the citizens of this country.

Haele