Mangaboy84

if our household income is low, can i qualify for the reductions in plan costs while in the process of AOS? kinda curious if it would save money to tell them household size and income verses what i've done which is just treated me as a married person looking on the marketplace for just myself

My only concern is i dont want to affect the wifes and her sons insurance plan and when i try to check a plan on the healthcare site for all 3 of us it doesnt let me select that only i want coverage

morpeth

Don't all insurance plans have to be ACA compliant ? I thought the was a key reason why insurance policies have risen.

morpeth

A lot depends I guess on what state, but a few years ago I was in a state where the insurance company said they wouldn't give an individual policy to one person but only the whole family for a personal policy- but if you worked for a company that offered insurance, you had the option of whether the family was covered.

carcajou

Things can change very quickly in politics, and Trump has often said one thing and then done another. Don't assume ACA will be gone until it is actually gone. Get your policy.

mrken30

Can you not be put on your wifes plan? There may be conditions for ACA if you are able to be insured through another plan.

Steerpike

It is my understanding that the ACA initially required that all plans were ACA compliant, but this took away a lot of cheap (and restrictive) plans, and lots of people complained, and thus, non-compliant but cheap plans were given a few years more life; something like, existing plans could continue for 'x' years, at which time, all plans must be compliant. I'm not sure on the details of this.

off_again

My wife works for a company that pools resources for smaller businesses to get better benefits for employees - like healthcare and ACA in particular.

Have to say that having seen the other end of this, its a nightmare and a massive overhead for the small business owner! It costs the company thousands and then the employee gets the minimum of coverage with massive deductibles! Its pretty obvious who wins here and its not the public or the business owner! So I am torn by the whole thing.

That said though, while the Rep's want it pulled, it won't happen anytime soon. Its a law and has a massive set of businesses wrapped around it. Think court cases, getting sued and so on - this will drag on for a while yet. But, be warned though, my wife mentioned that a lot of insurance companies pulled out of the ACA market this year and those who remained changed their plans massively. Here in N.CA, Kaiser is a big provider here and they hiked their plans massively! For some it was cheaper to go direct than it was to go through the ACA. Madness.....

But as mentioned its a year-on-year thing - so get what you can now, keep it for a year. But it might / probably will change at the end of the year, so just be prepared for that.

scrubbedexpat099

The ACA was designed to fail, just a question of when and how.

Just_Joy

I've not used the site so I'm not familiar with how it works, but can't you just search for an individual plan. You may have to tell it you are single for the purpose of getting a quote. If you want a subsidy based on family size I would think everyone has to be on the same plan.

Just_Joy

I work for a large company and I saw my deductible double from $500 to $1000 in two years, an 8% increase in premiums, and a co-pay that went from $25 to $30. Also they tightened up on prescription drug coverage making non-formulary medicines virtually unaffordable. I still feel pretty lucky tho considering what some people are having to pay.

carcajou

Just_Joy - yes. I left the US a few years ago. But I am a US Citizen. The premium on the plan I was on has increased 60% under Obamacare. I checked a few weeks ago just out of curiosity. It seemed deductibles though had remained the same.

nun

Premium increases are more to do with increases in systemic health care costs rather than how you buy your insurance.......employer provided plans have seen similar increases. Also if you are on Obamacare you will probably get a larger subsidy and so only pay a fraction of the increase. How Trumpcare addresses the basic issue of cost vs quality of insurance will be interesting to watch.

morpeth

Obamacare required coverage of pre-existing conditions, and also added many other requirements for all insurance plans that surely had something to do with the insurance increases.

It is a lot more expensive I know in state I was in to buy private medical insurance for a family since Obamacare. In my case a family policy went from $400 to $1,000 a month.

Pugilation

Yep, basically the market has had to correct for adding in higher risk people to the insurance pool.

aka, insurance was too cheap before the ACA came in as companies could specifically exclude people from plans. This is fine as a business if you want to maximise profits and reduce your exposure to higher risk insurees. Bad from a society perspective if you want to have access to healthcare for everyone.

kins

You had a family policy for $400 a month? Where did you find that? Did it actually cover anything?

We arrived in the US in 2007, and our family insurance policy (a very average one) was $1000 a month. That was with my husband receiving a 90% subsidy for himself and nothing for the rest of us.

A couple of years later (still pre Obamacare) we managed to get that down to $800 a month by looking around a lot and taking a high deductible policy.

It's now 2017 and we still have the same policy and it's still around $800 a month.