I posted my own experience with this before and, as usual, got slammed by the swooners who thought I was holding Obama personally responsible for this. That's just silly.
As I've pointed out before, this seems to be affecting only those with an individual policy (i.e., self-employed, like me.) Since I'm healthy, make enough money, and have no pre-existing conditions, I was happy with my policy, such as it was. To keep it affordable, I had a high deductible with no dental/vision/prescription coverage.
Under ACA, a policy with the same overall parameters (i.e., high deductible and no dental/vision/prescription) will cost about double the premium. Of course, this is because the old pre-ACA policy wasn't up to ACA standards. The replacement policy has more benefits, although I will never use them. While I'd rather not spend several hundred dollars more every month, I understand how this works and accept it as unavoidable.
The problem is that these individual policies are being priced according to various parameters related to the policy holder, such as age, location, sex, etc. In other words, it is outside the proper health insurance model of pooled risk. When you begin to price a policy based on the individual rather than the pool, you end up with people like me paying far more than we should (and others paying less than they should.)
The reason this isn't happening to employer-provided plans is because those are priced more on pooled risk (of the group.) The company pays a fixed amount per employee regardless of their age, location, sex and even pre-existing condition. The ACA should have extended the benefits of group coverage to the individual market. The "exchanges" would be one way to accomplish this by creating its own pool but it was designed specifically to avoid this. Thus, those in the individual market continue to get screwed.
To hear the media (and the swooners) defend this, we get "oh, that's 'only' a few million people." Well, gee. Thanks!
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