Your premium, once the ACA is completely implemented, cannot be based on your health. You cannot be charged more because you have a pre-existing condition. That is one of the major insurance reforms because currently you can be charged more, or denied insurance outright.
The high risk pools under the ACA (the insurance which is currently available for the people with pre-existing conditions who cannot currently obtain insurance) are far less than $1400 you quoted for open market insurance, or the $1100 you quoted for the PCIP plan. The pools are not for people with low income - they are for anyone with a pre-existing condition who cannot obtain insurance. In California, the maximum cost is $557/month. There is a $1500 deductible, but you would make that up in savings over the $1400 insurance you quoted in 2 months on the plan. This is just a stop-gap measure to protect people like you, and the price (for everyone) should drop even more once everyone is in the pools.
Which ties into my second point - the law limits the amount of money which can be charged for premiums but not spent on medical care. That does not directly limit the pay to executives or lower the average premium, but it does indirectly because the total of all that overhead cannot exceed a certain percentage of the amount spent on care. Because of the this provision of the ACA, it effectively lowered premiums because of the estimated mandatory rebate of approximately $1.3 billion dollars of premiums by August, because they spent too much on administration and not enough on medical care.
I am not arguing that the plan is perfect. It is far from it, but there is a lot of misinformation out there about the positive parts of the plan, many of which have not even kicked in yet.
= new reply since forum marked as read