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[SmittynMo]

I am 59, My wife is 61. I have been unemployed for 8 months with no job in sight. To be short, I have interviewed for 3 jobs during that time. There were 200+ applicants for each job. I was fortunate to make it to the top 10 in each interview. Once they saw how old I was, I'm almost for certain that killed my odds of being hired. So I hold very little hope for finding a decent paying job. Finding one with benefits are about 1 in 10,000.

My wife has been in the same job for 35 years and has built up only a 1200 a month pension. She wants to retire at 62. That gives me 6 months to find a job with benefits. So I called healthcare.gov to get an estimate of what it might costs us to obtain benefits. The facts are as follows: We will make about 35K a year. I will be 60, She will be 62. I was looking for healthcare and drug benefits and dental benefits. Here are my results.

At first, they wouldn't give me anything without my name address, etc. All I wanted was an estimate. After the person on the phone was reading all kinds of crap from a screen, over and over, I told her all I am looking for is and estimate. It was clear she did not understand my needs. It took many many times for me to get my point across. I finally asked to get someone else on the phone. She finally caved in and started asking me questions about how much our 2014 income was. I gave her 35K as a number and 60 and 62 as our ages. Since she is working in 2014, our income will be much higher. This leads me to believe we will have to wait a year before I can get affordable insurance, since her retirement and social security will be our only income. Anyway, I gave her 35K as our income, as though all we made in 2014 was her soc sec and pension.

After many minutes, she came up with a tax credit and quoted with with a 0 monthly payment and a 12K deductible. No dental was included in this price. Yes, that's a 12 THOUSAND deductible!! How can anyone afford this? I then asked her if there was other options. What if I made monthly payments and a lower deductible? The best she said she could do was 720.00 a month with a 1500 deductible. Again, no dental. I was so upset, I said, fine, I'm done.

My question is what the hell is so affordable about the Affordable Care Act? At this time, I am extremely disappointed, and don't know where to go next.