Well...my insurance premium is going up by $176.19 a month (and a Thank You)

[hunter]

111. Even for people whose rates are going up, it's a far better deal.

My wife and I thought we had good insurance... Sure it covered the small stuff. Prescriptions were ten dollars, the doctor was happy to see us for the usual upsets.

But then the big stuff hit. Not surprisingly if a person is unable to work full time it becomes difficult to pay the insurance premiums or to find less stressful work.

We struggled to pay COBRAs on top of the stuff our "good" insurance was stingy about that we had to pay for ourselves. Then the COBRAs timed out, and we graduated to uninsurability.

My wife was not fully recovered yet so she signed up for our state's high risk plan. It took a few months for her to be accepted. We insured our healthy kids separately.

We have insurance again through my wife's work, and she loves her job, but I have to feel bad for all the people who stay in jobs they loathe simply for the health insurance. As well as being horrible for the person caught in that situation, such a policy stifles innovation and small business in the U.S.A..

The ACA is a vast improvement for everyone. Many people think they have "good" or even merely "adequate" insurance, but haven't ever put it to the test.

From my own personal experience, being uninsured and uninsurable sucks.

I'd rather have a single payer system in the U.S.A. like real "first world" nations, but the ACA is better than what we had.