Affordable Health Care

When I left my job working for a company to become a software consultant working for myself, one of the first things I did was get an individual health insurance policy. Since my premiums aren’t subsidized, I’m fully aware of the true cost I’m paying and in the last eight years that cost has risen 333%:

With most of the rate increases I’ve gotten in the past, I’ve also received this bit of ominous advice from my insurance carrier:

You may qualify for other plans at different rates. Before you make a decision, you may want to discuss these alternate plans with us or your broker. If you choose a new plan, we might review your health information again. This might mean a higher rate. And you may not be able to return to your original plan.

So if I understand what they’re telling me, if I try to switch to another health plan to save money, I may end up paying more money for less coverage than what I have now. Thanks, let me think a bit and decide if I want to bend over now or bend over later.

Obtaining health insurance as an individual sucks; you lack the power that a large group has to negotiate reasonable rates for all of its members. I don’t see how any free market advocate can claim that this kind of lock-in—either to a company subsidizing/negotiating your costs or to a plan that can’t be changed without significant risk—is a sign of a competitive environment that will work things out if we just give it a chance. In fact, the opposite is true. In an unregulated free market, insurance companies will naturally exclude those most in need of health insurance in order to maximize their profits.

Long term, I honestly don’t know whether Obamacare is going to ruin the American way of life as we know it; I’ll leave those pronouncements to the politicians and pundits who claim to know everything, but can’t offer a better solution to the current broken system.

Short term, however, it’s going to cut my insurance premiums almost in half. Because I can’t be charged more or denied coverage for preexisting conditions (such as taking statin medication to help keep my cholesterol in check), and the information on the healthcare exchanges makes it much easier to compare plans from different carriers, I was able to find a better deal with a different carrier (keeping the same doctors I was using in my old network).

Only time will tell if there are any gotchas with my new health care plan and perhaps the government’s health care mandates are unsustainable, but from my perspective the Affordable Care Act really has made my health care more affordable.

Full disclosure: I did not vote for Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, but I, for one, welcome our new socialist overlords.