Reading some other comment sections, I've noticed some people are passing along incomplete information about signing up for insurance. Here are some tricks and facts you might not know:
If you want subsidies, you have to buy on the exchange. If you buy a policy on the exchange and don't ask for a premium subsidy, but then at the end of the year it turns out your income is low enough for a subsidy, you'll get it, as a tax refund. But if you bought an off-exchange plan, and then found out at the end of the year you would have been eligible for a subsidy, you're out of luck.
If your income is below 250% of the federal poverty line, you are eligible for subsidies for your out-of-pocket expenses (your copays, co-insurance, deductible) in addition to subsidies for your insurance premium. But to get those out-of-pocket expenses, you have to buy a Silver plan on the exchange.
More tricks and facts below the squiggle.
If you are sure you are not eligible for subsidies, you don't have to buy on the exchange. You might find a better, cheaper plan off the exchange. You can work with an insurance agent. Insurance agents don't cost anything to you.
If you've been having trouble setting up an account on the exchange, try starting over with a new email address. Did you know that on Gmail, if your address is something like My.Name@gmail.com, you also have the alias MyName@gmail.com? So if you tried setting up an account with My.Name@gmail.com and the account is now broken, you can go back and try with MyName@gmail.com. [Works for Gmail, not necessarily for other mail addresses.] Or you can use another family member's address, or set up a new address. UPDATE: You don't have to use a new email address. Just use a new user name. (Hat tip to CoyoteMarti's fine diary.)
If you live in a non-expansion state, and your income is low enough that you might have qualified for Medicaid instead of being able to get an insurance subsidy, make a realistic estimate on the high end of your potential income range to help you move up to the subsidy level. Do not give a fraudulent estimate. And if you end up not earning enough to have qualified for subsidies, my tax sources tell me there is no way for the IRS to get the subsidy back. [I am not a lawyer. I am not a tax accountant. Use this advice at your own risk.]
If you underestimate your income on your exchange application, and get subsidies to which you are not entitled, you have to pay them back at tax time. So you might be better off not asking for all the subsidy you think you'll be entitled to, to avoid nasty surprises at tax time.
If you overestimate your income on your exchange application, and you were actually entitled to more of a subsidy than you got during the year, you can get the rest of it at tax time. Also, if you correctly estimate your income on your application, but you don't ask for the full amount of your subsidy as an advance (that is, paid directly to the insurance company), you get the rest of your subsidy at tax time.
If you are close to the edge of the subsidy "cliff", be careful. The subsidy cliff is the income of 400% of the federal poverty level. People who earn less than 400% of the poverty line are entitled to a subsidy. People who earn more than 400% of the poverty line get no subsidy. If you get a subsidy through the year, and then at the end of the year you've earned too much and weren't eligible, you have to pay the subsidy back (on your taxes).
For some people, the subsidy cliff is huge. I'm not buying insurance for my family on the exchanges, but if I did, at 400% of the poverty line I'd be entitled to a $12,000 subsidy, and at 401% of the poverty line I'd be entitled to nothing. If my income were around that level and I got the subsidy, then turned out to have earned a dollar too much, I'd owe an extra twelve thousand dollars in taxes. More about the cliff in my other diary.
More tricks? Put them in comments and I'll edit them into this diary.