The President said: "You can keep your current insurance policy."

[haele]

69. Or, they find it quite adequate until something actually happens.

Well, perhaps only .005% of the population with cheap catastrophic insurance will suddenly developed a medical situation that the insurance doesn't cover. And will develop something avoidably chronic, go bankrupt, or die because they were suddenly faced with paying monstrous sums of money out of pocket on medical bills.

Problem with cut-rate medical insurance is that everyone will need medical care at some time in their life. And no one gets to pick the time they'll need it.
Everyone I know - including myself - has faced an extreme medical issue or developed a chronic condition that needed to be monitored or maintained, and none of us had a choice as to when it happened to us. The people I know who had no insurance or a cheap catastrophic plan always ended up owing a significant amount up front - thousands to tens of thousands of dollars - to deal with the medical issue.

While I might have been paying an equivalent amount over the years on a good plan, I've been able to keep my family and my health conditions to the level that we are able to maintain significant functionality. If my employer had decided to go with a cheap insurance that was basically a coupon book for doctors and services "in network" instead of going with a real insurance plan, we'd have been putting off treatment and probably ending up in bankruptcy and with a totally disabled, almost vegetative family member because we couldn't afford $400 a visit to a specialist every month, the $3800 a month in bio-medicine treatment and $800 - $1200 every three months in lab tests that wouldn't be covered by that "perfectly adequate" insurance.

No, that family member didn't plan to become disabled, and was living a very active, reasonably healthy life until he was in his early 40's. Never "needed to go" to the doctor for anything other than a cold or check-up before his body decided to quit. Yeah, we were complaining about the cost of my employer provided full-coverage insurance - until we needed it back in 2003. And if we had dropped that and gone with an alternative cheaper market-purchased catastrophic plan and waited "until we needed it" to get the better insurance we would have been SOL for getting any insurance at all.

Yes, there's a lot that needs to be fixed with the ACA. A whole lot of cracks that need patching, if people in the States or in Congress were willing to work on fixing the problems instead of pitching a political bitch.

But those "adequate, affordable" plans that were around prior to this year were really nothing more than a medical coupon club, and pretty close to worthless as health care coverage to most Americans who were got them. They're really set up for people who already had enough money to cover most medical bills but wanted the equivalent of "un-insured motorist" coverage for any big unplanned medical situations.

Haele