Out of curiosity, I went to Healthcare.gov to find out what my insurance options would be if I were a 44 year old healthy female looking for coverage. I was prompted to do so by an email from Lt. Governor Elizabeth Roberts, reminding me that we are in the countdown to 2014, where everyone will need to be enrolled for insurance.
The only options that came up for me were provided by Blue Cross Blue Shield and they gave me a range of plans with deductibles from $3,000 to $7,000 a year and premiums with a range of $275 to $400 a month. I had checked the box saying it would be difficult for me to afford care, but fat lot of good that did.
Forgive me, Dear Reader, but this does not sound like Affordable Health Care. This sounds like how to potentially lose a good chunk of my savings as well as pay a hefty monthly premium, all so I can’t have any really meaningful access to care such as mental health benefits and emergency room access without having to go broke. If this is really all the Affordable Health Care Act is doing, I’m not sure it will be an improvement over what we have and may just lead to more medical bankruptcies for the middle class and the poor.
I am withholding judgement for now, as I assume that more options will be listed soon in the directory, such as some more affordable plans from United Health Care or Neighborhood Health Plan. That’s my hope at least. If you want to check it out for yourself, give the Healthcare.gov Finder a try.
The RI health insurance exchange is not operational yet; the link you posted is a different site that does not fulfill the purposes of the actual health insurance exchange. See http://www.governor.ri.gov/healthcare/message/
Good to know….what is the point, then, of the Healthcare.gov finder. All it seems to do is lead to confusion about what the options are going to be in the near future.
Is your current coverage better or worse than that?
What I have for coverage is kind of irrelevant — I wanted to find out what coverage would look like for a middle aged women without a lot of money to pay for healthcare — to get a sense of how the policy was going to help those in need.