More Than Doubled Health Insurance Premiums
This week, I got a shock in my snailmail box. It was an offer from my current health insurance company for a different policy which meets the new federally mandated requirements.
For the least 3-4 years, my premiums were $148/month. That was manageable.
The new premium is $321/month and raises the annual deductible 20%. I checked both my current provider’s other plans and those from the Obama-Care website. The Obama-Care website didn’t have any plans from my current insurer and were about the same 2x price. I didn’t look too closely at the options. I use Costco’s Insurance marketplace now and did look over the different options there. The cheapest plan which was significantly worse than what I have today was $280/month. I compared a few other plans against the one picked for me by the insurance company. Found one that was $302/month, then tried to change my current plan over to it, but couldn’t login. Reset the password (I use a password manager, so it shouldn’t have been necessary), and wasn’t able to login still. It was late, so I decided to try later. I have until Monday (2 days) to pick a different plan.
That offer had an increase of 2.1x and will all but destroy the extra household budget for entertainment. My hobbies will simply have to take a back door to health insurance premiums. I suppose we will eat out less too.
I’m confused how a service that I barely use that has monthly cost of $138-$148 can justify doubling in a few months? Is this fraud or do the federally mandated changes, which don’t have anything to do with my needs, really require that much more money?
Or are the insurance companies using this to make everyone pay more?
Perhaps 100% free health care in the USA would be better?
It seems that I’m not alone with the premiums going up. Washington Post
Perhaps I can qualify for government assistance for these premiums? I think this is doubtful.
