Kate (not her real name) is a 21 year old that works the front desk at my gym three nights a week. (She also has a second job.) She is a full time student and last year made about $12,000. Here is her story as it relates to her experience with Obamacare.
One day last month when I came into the gym I asked Kate how she was doing doing and she said she had hurt her ankle but couldn't afford to have it looked at because she didn't have insurance. I explained to her that she should look at the health insurance website to determine what she might be eligible for. (First I suggested that she should be eligible to be on her parents plan but she insists she isn't. It sounds like the plan may be doing something illegal but that is another story.)
The next time I came to the gym I asked how her ankle was and she said it was feeling better, that she had ended up working out a trade with a doctor where he gave her an x-ray in exchange for tutoring his kids for 7 weeks. But she was still worried about not having insurance. She said that she had spent $2,000 out of pocket for medical expenses last year.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote the address down for the New York State health exchange and gave it to her and told her the next time I saw her I wanted to know what the site told her. She said she wasn't very optimistic as she had looked into insurance at the beginning of the year and couldn't find anything affordable, and had been told she made too much for medicare.
A week ago Friday she visited the site and registered and was told she was eligible for insurance and it would probably be subsidized. She was required to have an appointment with someone from the exchange to verify her income levels by providing a copy of last year's W-2 and her last 4 pay stubs.
Kate met with them on Friday (a week after she signed up through the site.) She is signed up for a plan that will give her good insurance for $75 a month, part of which is subsidized so that she will have to pay $40 a month. It goes into effect Jan.1 and she just wants to stay healthy between now and then. (It is 99% done, she was missing one stub which she will provide this week.)
Kate is very excited to have the insurance and certainly feels the $40 a month is manageable for her.
I told her that is important for her to tell her friends how to participate as well, and she said she will, but that most of her friends still fall under her parents plans.
In this case Kate required a little bit of hand holding to be shown where to go to see if she was eligible. She was also skeptical because she had looked earlier in the year, and had been told she would not qualify for assistance.
But once she actually went through the process it apparently went very smoothly and she is very happy with the results, and is really looking forward to Jan. 1!