I went to my local Blue Cross/Blue Shield on Monday to try to find out how I would be affected. I had to wait several hours to talk to my agent as they were in some kind of last minute training session, probably waiting until the last minute hoping the thing would just go away ( truthfully, I did the same thing ).
The only thing I learned with any certainty is that my plan goes out of existence on 30 December 2014. This is in direct contradiction to the President's representation that if you like your current plan, you can keep it.
I cannot.
As to what will be available, about all I could find out was that they have four plans ( tiers ?): bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, which sounds like something that is being pushed to simpletons, frankly.
They also told me that the cost for a new plan ( bronze is all I'm interested in - insurance to me is simply asset protection, nothing more. I'm not interested in financing or prepaying expenses, I just want it if a catastrophe occurs ) would be anywhere from about $74 month to about $441 month, depending.
The depending was on a couple of factors: a) the sum of lines 37 and 8b on form 1040, and whether or not my wife's employer (she works part time) offers "affordable" ( no clue how that is defined) group insurance, and maybe something else.
She asked me what my income was and I honestly have no idea what the sum of lines 37 and 8B is going to be ( no clue what these lines are ) - I started to explain I have a lot of federal tax credits from prior business endeavors and I'm self employed with other businesses and sometimes I spend more than I make, and sometimes I make more than I spend, and what does affordable mean, and her eyes just kind of glazed over, so I decided to let it go and wait a few more months and continue to hope that this thing will just go away.
I pay $382 / month now for a HDHP family plan which is about double what it was before PPACA, but we have aged and added an infant so I'm sure that is part of the price increase.
I'm probably one of the last persons that needs subsidizing, but because of our bizarre tax laws, I might well be subsidized by this harebrained scheme. As long as they're transforming society, rhey might want to start with the crazy tax code - I vote for the Fair Tax.
I haven't gone online to look at the exchanges. I can't imagine buying insurance that way. It's like the Geicoization of health insurance, except that health insurance is not trivial like car insurance.
