Vox: Give a little thought to what a GOP campaign against Bernie Sanders might look like.

[Recursion]

70. That's not how the exchanges work

(I'm taking it as a pretty safe bet that somebody earning minimum wage also has been dumped onto the exchange by their employer; I may be wrong of course.)

In the exchange the insurance company must clear its premiums with either the state or Federal HHS (depending on who runs the marketplace). The Federal government then subsidizes the purchase based on your income (this then got royally fucked by states refusing to expand Medicaid, which was how people slightly above the poverty level were supposed to get insurance; the subsidy formula doesn't make a silver plan affordable for someone who would have received Medicaid had it been expanded). Oddly enough, on DU we saw a lot of kvetching about the cost of bronze plans compared to their stingy benefits; this was intentional -- in many cases a silver plan with the subsidies will wind up being cheaper out of pocket.