What is your personal experience with Obamacare?

It actually seemed pretty easy to sign up. My only real question is that I’m not sure where dental fits in to all this. (Yea, I signed up…)

@DWW25921 as far as I know, dental insurance is separate. I signed up for separate medical and dental plans (I’m in Illinois).

When I had employer-sponsored insurance, it was the same. Two different plans.

Personal experience: I feel like I’m doing something wrong if my parents are going to be covering my medical insurance until I am 26. Who is paying for this? I don’t think I understand that part of it completely.

@jaytkay I’m not sure if I’ll be “assigned” a doctor or if I have to find one. It’s been a few weeks and I haven’t gotten any paper work yet.

We have company insurance, through Kaiser. The main difference is a much higher co-pay and higher deductable with fewer benefits.

@DWW25921 You have to find a doctor.

@dxs The 26-year rule is that you can remain in your parents’ group plan until age 26. Your parents and their employer are paying for it.

When you have employer-sponsored health care, every year you have to sign up and list how many people are included. You pay more for more people.

While you’re at it…
So does that mean that my parents have to consent to it?
Does this include check-up visits to doctors, dentists, eye doctors?
How does one go about setting up health care anyway?

I am told if I don’t sign up by the 16th they will fine me $500. Don’t know the 1st thing about signing up for it or how it works really, but if it get me covered medically; I am for it.

@dxs: My son turned 19 the same year that the Affordable Care Act provision to cover up to age 26 became active. I have to choose the parent and child/ren coverage through my work the same as I did when he was under 19; so yes, your parents have to consent to it because it is something they choose during open-enrollment with their employer/s. Therefore, it’s the same coverage they have for themselves, if they elected to keep you on their plan. It includes regular checkups, and I’m pretty sure the co-pay is waived for one routine check-up a year. Whether they have you on the dental also depends on what they chose. Vision care is an extra benefit that some plans cover, but many do not – you’d have to ask your folks what their plans are and whether you are on them.

For me, being able to keep my son on my plan until 26 even though he’s not a full-time student was a tremendous relief. After High School, he wanted to start his own business and it was physical labor, so I was worried he’d have no coverage if he got injured.

We put our three employees through the exchange and saved $650 a month.

@Hypocrisy_Central , what state are you in?

Absolutely no effect. My premium and my co-pay have gone up slightly due to inflation, that’s all.

@Hypocrisy_Central

If you have no insurance, the deadline for signing up is March 1, 2014.

If you do not, the penalty for a single person is $95. It would be calculated in your 2014 tax return.

Obamacare 101: What to know if you opt out of buying health insurance

And to answer the question myself – I am in line to donate a kidney. Without the Affordable Health Care Act, that would make me un-insurable forever..

Now I can give up a kidney AND get insurance for my non-kidney health issues.

Obamacare is making the companies that have great insurance packages to lower the amount of coverage for their employees or they will be paying a penalty for providing cadaliac health care for their employees.

@hearkat @jaytkay But if your income is higher than a certain threshold (I forget what that number is), your penalty for not signing up will be higher than $95.

If you are low-income, you can get subsidies when you sign up. You need to crunch the numbers every which way and decide for yourself.

@2davidc8 Thanks, you are correct.

For 2014, the flat fee is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child, up to $285 per family. Or the penalty could be 1% of family income

Most people have insurance, so this does not apply to them.

My sister and her husband are both Republicans, and they had their insurance canceled, due to ObamaCare.
So, they had to get a new policy. They signed up on the website, and got better coverage, and save $750 a month.
They are bitter about the first part, happy about the second. Thing is they were forced to do it.

Obamacare is making the companies that have great insurance packages to lower the amount of coverage for their employees or they will be paying a penalty

@creative1 how specifically does the new law make companies lower coverage.

I am interested in specifics.

@Judi what state are you in?
I am in California <with a heavy Arnold the Governator accent>

@Hypocrisy_Central, I’m in California too. The big secret about getting insurance through the exchange in CA is that you don’t have to navigate the exchange yourself if you don’t want to. There are lots of agents that can do the work for you, (at no cost to you) help you figure out which plan is best for you and do all the paperwork for you. If you PM me your city I’ll help you find an agent in your area or you can check it out yourself at https://www.coveredca.com.

My experience before the 1st was pretty bad. I have Medicare, but I wanted to sign my wife up for a new policy through the Mass. Health Connector. That site had been working just fine fore years, but due to all the changes the ACA imposed, the contractors for the state got it all fouled up. I wasn’t able to log in under our old credentials. I set up a new password, but it will not work, and it won’t let me reset it or start a new account, because it says I already have one. After an hour on hold with the state, they told me to do it before January 16. Our local clinic, which is a branch of Massachusetts General Hospital, has a social worker on staff to help people get signed up, so we’re going to use her good graces to cut through the BS.

All this, and we gain nothing because we already had Romneycare here.

@jaytkay My nephew who works for FedEx had what would be what is considered a cadallic plan according to Obamacare and in 2018 the cadallic care rule will impose a 40 percent excise tax on employee benefits exceeding $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. Though it don’t take place until 2018 employers who offer such coverage have already started changing plans so not to have to be faced with such a penalty.

@creative1 Then Fed Ex is reducing benefits for its own profit. A tax five years in the future is not the cause.

@filmfann
That is a mid range PC every month. Who would complain about that?

Obama care is giving the companies that have great insurance packages to lower the amount of coverage for their employees or they will be paying a penalty for providing health care for their employees.

My husband and I have our own business. Because we already purchased private health insurance, our plan is grandfathered in until the end of this year, but the ACA has already drastically improved our covered in several ways:
1. Our annual checkups and preventive care are now 100% covered. We used to pay for these visits ourselves because our high deductible plan didn’t cover them because we never met the deductible. With three kids, this is huge. Huge huge huge. And I no longer have to go to Planned Parenthood to be able to afford my annual visit but can use a local doctor instead.
2. My birth control prescription is now 100% covered.
3. It makes me feel a huge amount of relief to know that if one of us is sick develops a problem, our rates won’t go up and we won’t lose our coverage. I can’t even put into words how much of a relief this is.
4. In spite of all the added benefits the ACA has given our previously horrible insurance coverage, our monthly cost only increased by $30.

I don’t think it’s perfect. We are paying almost $400 a month and if one of us gets sick or needs tests other than annual things, we have to pay until we meet a high deductible. But it is an improvement and I seriously don’t know what we’d do if we had to go back to paying for insurance that did nothing for us especially now that my husband and I are entering our 40s. We are lucky to all be healthy but with kids who play sports and us getting older I think it’s only a matter of time before we are faced with some expensive medical issue and I dread that day. The insurance will keep us from going hugely into debt at least.

Having a local insurance agent handle all of this for us at no cost made it easy to navigate. He even set us up with an accident clause so that if someone goes to the ER for an injury we have a manageable copay instead of having to meet the deductible. When you sign up over a website you don’t necessarily see all these options so I would urge anyone who has to buy their own insurance to see an agent. You will get the most for your money and have everything explained to you in plain English.

I got a free breast pump. It retails for $300. Pumping is a pain but I will be able to go to work and my daughter will still get the benefits of breastfeeding. And I have 300 extra dollars.

@filmfann This reminds me of my inlaws. He has Medicare, she is retired but too young for Medicare. She needs health insurance but he flat out refuses to let her sign up on the insurance exchange because he said, “I’m not buying anything from Obama or using anything from the government.” Calmly explaining that using the exchange to find a plan is like using Priceline to buy a plane ticket got me nowhere. He won’t accept the fact that she’d still be buying a plan from a major insurance carrier. I figured it was in the best interest of family peace to avoid asking if he would be giving up Medicare since it is a government program. Even my husband can’t get through to the stubborn old bastard.

She still has no coverage and can’t afford to visit a doctor for even a minor complaint. It’s ridiculous.

@jaytkay Actually it says in different things I have read on the subject that most that most companies that have cadallic healthcare are already doing this now rather than waiting for the deadline.

@creative1 OK, I can see companies planning ahead. So then the question is, are they passing on the reduced costs to the employees. Or just reducing benefits, keeping the savings, and blaming Obama?

I don’t know either way. I should look into it before commenting more.

I just find it sad that rather than commend the companies that provide good or in some cases excellent health care to their employees that they are going to penalize them. This should be something to be commended not penalized.

@creative1 Can you show us how that’s true via a credible link, and not some right-wing echo chamber of corporate site with a huge financial incentive to lie?

@ETpro Here are some links backing up @creative1‘s comments.

NY Times – High-End Health Plans Scale Back to Avoid ‘Cadillac Tax’

Lehigh Valley Morning Call – Is it too early to get ready for Obamacare’s Cadillac tax?

NBC News – Large employers cite Obamacare ‘Cadillac’ tax in reducing benefits

Thank you for responding for me @jaytkay

Good luck finding an affordable premium. If you can’t find an affordable premium you are hit with a monthly fee that is more than the premium you can’t afford. And good luck finding a way to pay for the outrageous deductibles.

Good luck finding a doctor that takes your insurance.

Good luck finding a doctor that takes your insurance and is accepting new patients.

Good luck getting the tests you need. Your insurance carrier might not approve of it or it can take weeks or months to get it approved. You are left to sit at home and suffer and miss work, which means no paycheck.

This has been our experience. We never had any of these problems before Obamacare. Finding a doctor was easy for us before Obamacare. Getting quick appointments were easy for us before Obamacare. Getting the tests we needed were easy for us before Obamacare.

btw- I’m not anti-Obama