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Obamacare facts: While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped millions of low-income Americans get medical care, middle-class citizens who have signed up for Obamacare plans are getting crushed financially.
Many middle-class people who enrolled in an Obamacare plan have not only seen premium rates rise, but are getting stuck with steep deductibles. Despite having health insurance, these folks often find they can't afford treatment.
"The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor," David R. Reines, a 60-year-old former hardware salesman from New Jersey, told The New York Times. "We have insurance, but can't afford to use it."
According to healthcare consumer group Families USA, close to 30% of people with high-deductible Obamacare plans said they went without needed medical care in 2014 because of the high cost.
High-deductible health insurance plans are nothing new. Before Obamacare, mostly healthy people bought them to protect themselves from the impact of a catastrophic illness. And the premiums were low.
Obamacare Facts: High Deductibles Now Typical
But Obamacare has made high deductibles common on the majority of insurance plans offered through the exchanges. And they keep going up.
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, health insurance deductibles have grown six times faster than wages since 2010.
A high-deductible plan is one with a deductible of at least $1,300 per year for an individual or at least $2,600 a year for a family, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
But many Obamacare plans have much higher deductibles. In Chicago, the median deductible is $3,400, according to Healthcare.gov. In Phoenix, it's $4,000. In Miami, it's $5,000. Some family plans have deductibles as high as $12,000 to $13,000 a year.
That's a ton of money for the average cash-strapped American. One in four have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate.com. And a survey by the U.S. Federal Reserve in 2014 found that 47% of Americans, when faced with a $400 expense that needed to be paid immediately, would need to sell something or borrow the money.
It's no wonder that so many people are putting off needed medical care.
But wait. Wasn't the ACA supposed to make health insurance more affordable for more people?
That was the intent. But here's what happened…
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David Zeiler, Associate Editor for Money Morning at Money Map Press, has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including 18 spent at The Baltimore Sun. He has worked as a writer, editor, and page designer at different times in his career. He's interviewed a number of well-known personalities - ranging from punk rock icon Joey Ramone to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Over the course of his journalistic career, Dave has covered many diverse subjects. Since arriving at Money Morning in 2011, he has focused primarily on technology. He's an expert on both Apple and cryptocurrencies. He started writing about Apple for The Sun in the mid-1990s, and had an Apple blog on The Sun's web site from 2007-2009. Dave's been writing about Bitcoin since 2011 - long before most people had even heard of it. He even mined it for a short time.
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Obamacare is proving to be a nightmare for my family as both my children finished high school and entered the workforce. Both have been unable to find full-time permanent employment so it is impossible to predict what their annual income will be. We are in Georgia, where there is no medicaid expansion, so if their income drops one dollar too low, yes, I said too LOW, they will lose all the subsidy and be required to pay the full premium. Worse yet, is that a single dollar decrease in income will cost them thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs for… Read more »
Kathryn — I don't see why they just don't get it. I understand you fully because I am basically going thru the same thing will premiums, deductibles and out of pocket. I am a house wife and have been now for over 14 years. I was doing ok with my insurance until my husband retired. Then I had to resort to buying my own insurance outright. That was ok for a couple of years. Even before obamacare my premiums kept going up each year until I could not afford insurance. I prayed like hell that I would be ok and… Read more »
If you and/or your family are basically healthy and generally follow Christian values you may want to browse for one of the HealthSHARE plans that are available. If they accept you, you can be exempt from the ACA altogether. So sad the media and government do not tell people about them but that is another topic.
Thank you. Looking into them. Currently uninsured. Haven't been to doc in two years. Just want something for emergencies.
"Just sign the bill" Pelosi said , "read it late".
She has different insurance
Thomas Jefferson warned of "oligarchy"
"such workers have started to forego needed medical treatment because they can't afford it".
so it's working as planned. reduce the demand for medical treatment because most of it is detrimental to your health anyway.
The sole purpose for this fiasco called ACA is the destruction of the middle class. If the middle class is destroyed, they win….
Typical US, complicated and not well thought out. The culprits are the capitalists who want to "make" (not earn) money on everything on the face of the earth. In my home country [Germany -Ed.] everyone is insured because it is mandatory. The premiums are not all that high because most insurances are not for profit and their admin cost is about 5 to 6% of the premium. Deductibles? Never heard of. The only time in 40 plus years I has a deductible was during a hospital stay because the government figures, rightfully so, that I do not need to buy… Read more »
You make a lot of great points. So many people are confusing affordable health care (Obamacare) with affordable health insurance. Obamacare doesn't decide your costs for insurance and this can mainly be blamed on republican congressmen who are funded by insurance providers but blaming doesn't help anyone. Instead, all of our money now is being given to insurance companies and they are banking huge profits, while doctors and hospitals are seeing less because all of us will stop going to the doctors. Our healthcare is not something we should be allowing for profit corporations to control. We all deserve good… Read more »
Thanks for the accurate article, except for your line: "Unfortunately, Obamacare's architects misjudged how the health insurance market would react to all the changes the law made." It is my belief and the belief of many others that this was not misjudged, but purposeful in order for this ACA system to collapse, requiring the Govt to come in and "save the day" by instituting a single payer, govt-run system like Medicare for everyone. This law must be repealed and somehow an smooth transition back to a free market system with controls and mandates again run by private insurers with provisions… Read more »
Might be interesting to note that "our congress did this, not "our President".
Seriously???? Our Democratice Congress = our President in ALL policy matters. Oh and, by the way, the President signed the bill.
Thank you for reminding people of this.
Also, notice how many people confuse affordable healthcare with affordable health insurance. None of us pay for healthcare. All of our money is going to these for profit insurance providers. They are in control now.
Worst thing I saw in the US. You have to pay for not having health insurance. Next will be, people will have to pay if want just to live???
Unless you're a non-producing welfare sucker of some type, Obamacare is bad news. Others enroll in an individual Obamacare policy that locks them into higher and higher premiums, having huge co-pays, ever larger deductibles if serious illness of injury visits leading to bankruptcy, and fewer choices of providers if in fact they find one. As in the article, the middle class has been screwed, but the U.S. economy has been doomed. With Obamacare making employers cautious to hire, cutting hours, cutting wages, and forcing retirement of most productive senior workers, the economy is circling the bowl. Economic effect to the… Read more »
My husband and I are both 60, retired business owners. For many years we provided ourselves and our employees with health insurance. After working 7 days a week for over 35 years, we are seeing all of our hard-earned money being spent on insurance. We are both healthy so we have a 12400 deductible policy which costs us 1036.00 a month. We basically pay for everything out of our pocket – no vision or dental covered. Wouldn't it be great for the American economy to have all of this money circulating instead of going to Obamacare? A lot of those… Read more »
I value what you're saying, so I want to help by redirecting your misunderstanding. Your money is not going "to obamacare", your money is going to a for-profit insurance company, which means they have to charge you enough money to cover all the medical bills of all their clients who fall ill, plus enough to cover the millions it costs to run the insurance company (salaries, overhead, etc), plus enough to make a huge profit. We need to get rid of the middle man all together. If all healthcare costs went directly through the government just like costs for roads… Read more »
My company sponsored insurance requires a $2500 deductible before they pay anything. What ever happened to the 80/20 plan?
Could you please let me know the obamacare facts?