New Health Law Frustrates Many in Middle Class

New trick I just learned for 2014 (and maybe 2015): you can get 12 month &quot;short term health insurance&quot;) for about $50&#x2F;yr. This isn&#x27;t great coverage, but does have a $750k lifetime limit, which is <i>probably</i> enough for a single year. Short term insurance is <i>not</i> covered by ACA; it&#x27;s more like disability insurance in that it&#x27;s an indemnity.<p>You basically keep the plan for catastrophic insurance, and use it if necessary. If you get sick in 2014 and need more medical care in 2015, you switch in the next open enrollment period to an ACA compatible plan. You have to pay the penalty due to not being covered by an approved plan, but $95 and $695&#x2F;yr isn&#x27;t huge compared to the premium increase. (in extremis, you can also engineer a qualifying event for enrollment; if I discovered I had cancer of the soul or something in mid-2014, I&#x27;d move states, and as a new resident, be eligible for an ACA Gold plan...or get a job at a bigco, of course.)<p>I&#x27;m looking at doing this for 2014; $41&#x2F;mo vs. $250&#x2F;mo would be nice, even with a penalty.<p>Extra bonus: if you had an individual plan in 2013 (like I did) which got cancelled due to ACA, you don&#x27;t have to pay the penalty in 2014, either.

I bought cheap, catastrophic health insurance during my past year of funemployment. I eventually got a letter that the plan would not be offered in the future because it does not meet all provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Personally, it doesn&#x27;t matter because I&#x27;ve got insurance through a job again, but it struck me as funny (or sad) that the law was strangling the cheapest plans. I have friends who are basically going without insurance now because the cheap bare-bone plans are drying up.

Anytime there is a strict cutoff rather than a gradual roll-off there will be people who are artificially disadvantaged.<p>That tends to create a substantial income cliff which people have to climb in order to actually benefit from their increased income. If you&#x27;re a salaried employee it might matter little, but if you&#x27;re self-employed or a small business owner it&#x27;s a billboard saying &quot;don&#x27;t work too much harder unless you&#x27;re willing to work MUCH harder&quot; to overcome the income cliff.<p>I don&#x27;t have even a clue as to how many small business owners this will affect, but it seems likely that it will be more than a few hundred thousand. I&#x27;d guess millions. It&#x27;s really unfortunate.

Well. Under the old regime, my family was paying about $2000 a month for premium blue shield&#x2F;cross for three. 44, 46, and 17 years old. BUT, my work was subsidizing my insurance so I only paid $800&#x2F;month. Without subsidy, $1000, in fact, costs the family more.<p>So, my partner and I &quot;split up&quot;. We stopped filing a domestic partnership in California and now, I pay 175$ a month. She pays $100 a month. And her son pays nothing (Medical).<p>By breaking up the logical family unit, we saved over $500 a month because my partner makes around $20K a year.<p>I&#x27;m not so sure this is working out.

&gt;The cheapest insurance plan they can find through the new federal marketplace in New Hampshire will cost their family of four about $1,000 a month, 12 percent of their annual income of around $100,000 and more than they have ever paid before. Even more striking, for the Chapmans, is this fact: If they made just a few thousand dollars less a year — below $94,200 — their costs would be cut in half, because a family like theirs could qualify for federal subsidies.<p>Is this accurate? It sounds like bad math on the part of NYT similar to people who believe that make a few hundred dollars more and shifting to a higher marginal tax bracket means less net income. Aren&#x27;t taxes &amp; subsidies normally structured to avoid these sort of discontinuities?

Quick question, I&#x27;m in the same middle class, and am self employed. I&#x27;m thinking of not having an insurance at all, and if I get really sick long term, I&#x27;ll switch to an Obama care insurance. Is this something possible ? (now that they can&#x27;t check for preexisting conditions). Or will I get screwed somehow.<p>I&#x27;m 26 so I went to the doctor maybe twice in 6 years, I only want coverage in case of emergency.<p>PS: I can pay 5000$ out of pocket if needed.

Can you remind me again, why did you vote for Obama second time?

Did anyone do the math here? If a family making 100K pays 12K for insurance, and a family making 94K pays 6K for insurance, that is the exact same amount at the end of the year. Wonder how long they had to search to find this clean of an example. Seems the best solution for the family is to either ask for a raise (all take home profit) or take a sabbatical every year (more time to enjoy life).

I&#x27;ve never found much to like about policies pitched by any of our leaders left or right, but ObamaCare surprisingly seems to be something that is positive.<p>It may not be much different for single people or those under 30, but if you have a family, keeping them in an acceptable PPO was running $1200-$1500&#x2F;month (total corporate or individual) - and for individual, that&#x27;s if you don&#x27;t get rejected for something as ridiculous as someone having been treated for allergies.<p>Plugging in some numbers on healthcare.gov, I&#x27;m seeing comparable PPO&#x27;s for $700&#x2F;month and if you play with the numbers you can see that the tax credit drops the plan cost as income drops below 4x the poverty level, so for example a family making $50K&#x2F;yr would only pay $200&#x2F;mo for the same plan.<p>This seems like a step in the right direction in so many ways.<p>I think most negative publicity is coming from polarized sources who would reject anything, and their paid media outlets.