Today, I filed for the federal program called the PPACA, or what vocal opponents call Obamacare. I'll explain what I went through, and what you might expect when you choose to file as well.
I created my healthcare.gov account. This is no different than getting a free email like Google or Yahoo account. You will need an email account, but everybody has one these days. If you don't, I do recommend a Google email. It's worked for me for years, stores a ton, and if free. Then again, I do drink the Google kool-aid.
I then log in to the healthcare.gov site. The first thing I do is to see if I qualify for subsidies provided by the PPACA. It asks me questions of residence, sex, date of birth, SSN, income level, school debt. I get paid 10$/hr for 29 hours a week and have a significant amount of school debt related interest. I qualified for 380$-ish/month subsidy.
I'm asked about if I smoke, how many am I covering, dependents, and other information that a general insurance query would ask. This all goes smooth sailing.
There's a bit of disclosure, and much less than the last health care that my long-ago previous employer provided. Starbucks back in '07 was a minefield of what you could and couldn't do, at least in my area. Their insurance (Aetna) was also what left me $6000 in debt for physical therapy for my shoulder they said they would cover, but didn't. The healthcare.gov's disclosure is straight forward.
I'm told there's 4 plan types: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. For bronze, you should expect the plan to pay 60% of your medical costs. Silver, you expect it to cover 70%, and gold is 80%. Platinum is still in the works. With my subsidies, I was told the bronze plan would be $0-$4. The silver was from $9-$35, and the gold was $90 (?)-$135. Each plan type had anywhere from 4 providers to 35 providers, so there were lots of smaller variations. However, unlike other insurances, the plan base is all the same for everything in the class, so you don't see exclusions for this but not that, and that but not this.
I chose the upper silver plan, at $35 a month. The major notes here is that a doctor's visit is $10, drugs are cheap ($10-$30), and "bad events" are no longer in bankruptcy territory.
The last thing I have to do is to pre-pay for the first month's of service before January 1'st. The payment gateway will be set up mid-November. Then, this insurance policy will be good and active. As of now, I am marked for this insurance and will be sent the paperwork on the whole plan, including doctors here in town and surrounding areas.
I do wish all may get the health care they need.
Sincerely,
Joshua Crawley
(myusername) @ gmail dot com
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