News About Obamacare Has Been Bad Lately. How Bad?

[strategery blunder]

5. Hell, people just above the expanded medicaid cutoff will get squeezed, too.

I'm talking about ~150% FPL, which is about where I'm at.

The first year I was on ACA, my total monthly premium was about $280, my subsidy was about $210, leaving me with $70. (Fortunately I was able to find a plan on the exchange with a much more feasible $600 out of pocket maximum--adding another zero to OOPM makes the policy worthless to someone of this income).

That was manageable, and sure I made some sacrifices elsewhere to be able to re-enter the healthcare system after years of doing without, but those sacrifices were worth it.

A few months ago, it came time to renew. (Technically I had to switch to the next most similar plan as the one I had was discontinued, but the coverage is very similar.) My subsidy remained the same, but the premium went up to about $310...leaving me with $100 out of pocket premium.

The insurance company will say that my premium "only" went up 10%. But from my perspective--going from $70 to $100--it went up almost 50%!

I can probably absorb that for a year or two, but there will come a point, probably before the next presidency ends, where it becomes more economically sensible for me to cancel the policy, pay the tax penalty, and use the savings of not paying a premium to fund my $70/month prescription (that I currently pay $10 copay for) and the associated ARNP appointments to get said prescription renewed.

ACA was pretty much a one-time-lowering of costs to get people into the system who could not afford medical care before, but it came up short in long term cost containment. In ten or twenty years, we'll see large swaths of society who are right back where they started before ACA.