"Stovall found that if her family made under $98,000, she could get an insurance plan for $10 a month.

But she warns of a caveat with the non-sliding scale. If you earn $1 over those subsidy-eligible limits of $98K, you owe the full $36,000 cost."

The article correctly notes that it is the self-employed who are hardest hit. The conversation seems to be driven by people who either are getting coverage through their employers, or from the gov't, and who therefore don't understand the reality.

Here's what happened to us after this abomination became law. Our premiums doubled, as did our deductible, and then went up again. The insurance budget we planned on just wouldn't work anymore.

We were hosed by the "marketplace." As farmers, our income was too low for subsidies (which we neither needed nor deserved in an honest market). The Govco solution was to put us on Medicaid, which was ridiculous since even though we have a low income, we're not poor. But even that option was unavailable because Virginia didn't expand Medicaid. So we had no option.

The solution we arrived at was to raise our income by not claiming all of our expenses, as absurd and ridiculous as that is. By getting over the income threshold that way our premiums went from over $1,000/month (they'd likely be double or triple that now) to something like $3/month. Preposterous. Basically we could get free "insurance."

Right around that time Mrs. Joey took an off-farm FT job (for other reasons) that provides us with insurance, making the issue go away.

That's how messed up the system is these days.




[Post edited by Joey Wahoo at 11/20/2017 5:31PM]