The total cost of my health insurance premiums is about 20k/year; some of this is subsidized by my employer. I have a $4500 deductible. The insurance does not pay for anything, outside of preventative care, until I've paid $4500. After that, they contribute 80% up to some number, $7500 I think, and then they contribute 100% until the end of the calendar year.
Because I have such a high deductible, and due to the opacity of medical billing, I am not going to the doctor unless I'm pretty sure that not going to the doctor means I'm going to be put out of work or going to die. "Preventative" care is defined very strictly: you get a physical. For example, "preventing" the development of pneumonia by treating your respiratory illness early does not count as preventative care.
The best I can do is squirrel away what I can in my HSA...but that's one health catastrophe from being blown away. God forbid I come down with any kind of chronic illness that lasts longer than the calendar year.
That said, for the poor population, this is definitely true - Medicaid is a dream compared to private insurance. At least in my state, if you're on Medicaid, you don't even see medical bills. It's really lamentable the states were allowed to turn down the Medicaid expansion - the expansion of public health insurance was the best part of the ACA, in my opinion, and the most regrettable part of the bill is that the public option is not available to everyone.
That doesn't sound right - What is your maximum out of pocket?
Well, you can make the argument for preventive care on medical grounds or even moral ones, but you can't say it actually saves money. When people have access to preventive care, they also tend to consume more, which means greater costs (although better overall care)[0].
This has borne out with the ACA[1], as the data shows that preventive costs increased faster than chronic and acute care costs dropped, by a very significant margin.
[0] https://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/when-prev...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/upshot/no-giving-more-peo...
The ACA report last month shows the opposite of what you're saying, that oupatient costs have dropped more than inpatient costs have risen, and that medical prices have not risen more than inflation.
Page 58+ here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20...
Moreover, in the case of expensive or catastrophic coverage, society is picking up those costs anyway (or alternately, just letting people die). Your premiums then go to cover the costs of people who wound up declaring bankruptcy. And no insurance (or bad insurance) cuts into preventative care that can detect problems early, when they're much cheaper to treat.
I support the ACA (or better yet, much more socialized models) because I want to optimize for overall economic productivity.
I agree an employer based model does discriminate against startups, but my point is that the ACA also makes it harder for the median entrepreneur to succeed. The fact that the fringe cases can start companies does not to me justify the drain on all other entrepreneurs.
People pay into a pool and if one day they too become ill they'll need to draw on that. Prior to the ACA it was in the best interest of insurers to simply eject all the "sick" people from the pool. What use is insurance if when you really need it they cut you off?
This hurts everyone. It's not about paying more in premiums. It's about insurance that sticks around when the shit hits the fan.
Without ACA, a software engineer with a chronic illness wouldn't be able to start a business. Meanwhile, a healthy software engineer will start a business regardless of ACA because a minor difference in healthcare premiums is not material to that decision.
