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I was laid off in late 2013, shortly before the ACA took effect. When I was laid off, I had the opportunity to keep my existing plan on an individual basis thro

I was laid off in late 2013, shortly before the ACA took effect. When I was laid off, I had the opportunity to keep my existing plan on an individual basis through COBRA. My savings and cash flow would not permit such. Some web searching lead me to believe that I'd be facing similar rates if I went shopping myself, so I opted to go without, and see what happened when the ACA took effect. In the beginning of 2014, I looked at my state's exchange. The plans were now even more expensive, and per the questionnaire on the exchange's site, I was ineligible for the subsidy to make it less-unaffordable because of how much I'd made in the previous year. So I said "fuck it", and opted to eat the tax penalty when I filed my taxes in the following year. So, no, in my experience, the ACA did not decouple the affordability of a health plan from one's employer -- it made it worse.

sedachv 9y ago
> So, no, in my experience, the ACA did not decouple the affordability of a health plan from one's employer -- it made it worse. I still don't follow your reasoning. You seem to be saying that any health insurance is too expensive for you to afford, so the ACA doesn't work? As you saw from COBRA, health insurance is expensive, and your compensation package from full-time employment obscures that expense, because typically your employer asks you to pay only part of the expense from your salary. You have to figure the real cost of health insurance into your rates as an independent contractor. The ACA made it easier to shop for health insurance as an independent. I was in a similar situation to yours - when I was laid off last year, I ended up picking a plan from Covered California that was $80 less expensive per month than the offered COBRA plan, with significantly lower out of pocket costs ($0 vs $9,000 deductible, for starters), in a much more highly rated provider network. So the plan that I was getting from my employer was a lot worse than what I chose to buy through ACA. This would be more apparent if your employer paid out the cost of all of your benefits in your salary and then had you pay the full cost of insurance (which is essentially what happens when you are an independent contractor).

sedachv 9y ago

> So, no, in my experience, the ACA did not decouple the affordability of a health plan from one's employer -- it made it worse. I still don't follow your reasoning. You seem to be saying that any health insurance is too expensive for you to afford, so the ACA doesn't work? As you saw from COBRA, health insurance is expensive, and your compensation package from full-time employment obscures that expense, because typically your employer asks you to pay only part of the expense from your salary. You have to figure the real cost of health insurance into your rates as an independent contractor. The ACA made it easier to shop for health insurance as an independent. I was in a similar situation to yours - when I was laid off last year, I ended up picking a plan from Covered California that was $80 less expensive per month than the offered COBRA plan, with significantly lower out of pocket costs ($0 vs $9,000 deductible, for starters), in a much more highly rated provider network. So the plan that I was getting from my employer was a lot worse than what I chose to buy through ACA. This would be more apparent if your employer paid out the cost of all of your benefits in your salary and then had you pay the full cost of insurance (which is essentially what happens when you are an independent contractor).