I was laid off in April 2013. Since then, I've been struggling to pay for really expensive COBRA health insurance. That ends on October 31. I'm 63, so I have two more years to wait for Medicare.
So, beginning Nov. 1, 2014, I'll be diving into Obamacare.
I have yet to see how it's going to work for me financially, but one thing is certain, I'll be paying a lower premium.
Not everything I've learned going through the sign-up process is good, but it's not entirely bad either. Follow me across the Cheese Doodle of Democracy for some griping and some praise.
First and foremost, I am deeply relieved to be out of the COBRA system. COBRA has not been kind to me.
Signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1985. I allows you to stay in your former employer's insurance plan for 18 months after you separate from your job, paying 100% of your premium. In my case, that premium has been the largest bill I have to pay each month. It's more than my mortgage and more than my car payment. I have enough income that I've been able to keep up with it, but I really wonder how most people laid off from their jobs could possibly pay for something this expensive. I'm single, so I pay for an individual plan. For anyone with a spouse and children, it would be completely crushing.
And for that huge, hard to swallow premium I've been getting really bad service. I could write a whole other diary about my problems with my health insurance this past year and a half. It's been mostly because of the administrative policies of my former employer. But I've talked to a lot of other people stuck in the COBRA system and their stories aren't very different from mine. The problem is, you don't work for the company anymore, so the human resources people don't really feel any need to serve you. Nothing they do is done with your welfare in mind. You're nothing but a nuisance as far as they are concerned. (YMMV. There may be a company out there that treats its laid off workers with respect and dignity, but I haven't found it yet.)
But enough about COBRA. I'm within 60 days of being done with it. Good riddance.
Since I'm within 60 days of not having insurance, it was time to sign up at HealthCare.gov. I started the process about a week ago, and ran into a snag almost immediately.
Early in the application process, I hit a spot on the website that stopped me dead every time I got there. I tried over and over. I simply could not get past the privacy policy acknowledgement. I ended up doing the application over the phone with their call center -- after a long wait on hold listening to infuriating music.
After that, I finally figured out why the website was defeating me. It was because of invisible check boxes. They use a light-gray color border for check boxes. On an LCD monitor, those boxes are only visible from some angles. So, if you don't check the box you can't see, the page will never let you go on to the next step.
This is just bad design. There's a lot of frustratingly bad design on the site. There are many places where you have to answer the same question several times to get to the next step. If you go to the help page, it logs you out and you have to log back in to continue. Fill boxes are even more invisible than the check boxes. (The only way to find them is to click around until you get a text cursor.) Whoever designed the user interface on the website was more interested in a clean, uncluttered, modern look than ease of reading and use. It's style over substance.
That's the bad of it.
The kind of good part is my new premium is going to be two-thirds of what I'm paying now. My prescriptions are going from $20 for generic to $4 for generic. This is without the tax credit I'm likely eligible for. The tax credit would take my premium down to one third of what I'm paying now.
The bad part is a really high deductible. The new plan has a $6,000 deductible. That means, unless I need surgery or have a catastrophic medical event, I'm likely never going to get a significant amount back in benefits. I'm a reasonably healthy 63-year-old. I see my GP about every three months for routine blood work and a cardiologist twice a year. That with some maintenance prescriptions is what I expect my health care to cost for the next year.
If I wanted to pay pretty much the same premium as I'm paying now (or more), I could get a plan with a lower deductible (in the $1,500-2,000 range). But I've run the numbers and have decided to go with the lower premium, higher out-of-pocket scheme.
The tax credit is complicated for me. That's why I've opted to get it when I file my taxes rather than a discount on my premium right away. My income is variable because I'm self employed. I can estimate what my total income is going to be this year, but that could change instantly if I run into a big, unexpected expense or windfall. Rather than get stuck paying back the subsidy if this year turns out to be better financially than I'm thinking it will, I'm going to wait until all the numbers are in.
There are only going to be two months for me in the new plan this year. So, if the high deductible turns out to be a problem, I'll be able to change to a lower-deductible plan during the next open enrollment period.
So, I believe the net result of the Affordable Care Act is going to be positive for me. The pros:
1. I can buy a plan that will have a lower premium than I'm paying now, even without a subsidy.
2. No pre-existing condition exclusions.
3. I will be able to deal with my insurance provider directly from now on. No more dealing with my former employer's HR department, who refers you to a third-party plan administrator, who changes every couple of months, who won't acknowledge that you exist.
The negatives:
1. The website is still not very good. (This is the federal exchange website, BTW, I'm in Michigan and Michigan doesn't have its own state exchange.)
2. Gone are the days of not having a deductible.
3. The HealthCare.gov call center has long wait times and really irritating hold music. I've still go that single-musical-phrase tune ricocheting around inside my head.
My bottom line is: I'll give the ACA a 7 out of 10 rating.