I probably won't be getting health insurance any time soon. The reason I'm not, though is not, as kos apparently believes, because I want to spite Obama, or because I'm a "young invincible" (translated by so many here as "idiot").
It's because the insurance system still sucks. My story after the squiggle.
Edit: I flubbed up on the first draft of this and said my health insurance minimum was $100 a year. It's actually $100 a month. I corrected it below. Sorry for the confusion.
Here's my story: I work an IT job at a Virginia public university. I am almost 30 years old. I make $18.00 an hour, less than half what my predecessor made, and he was salaried. At the time, it beat homelessness. My hours got reduced when Virginia pulled a Papa John's -- to which the left-wing blogosphere responded with a noted lack of outrage -- and capped part-time hours to dodge ACA requirements. Thankfully, my boss is a decent sort, and raised my wages to compensate.
But it still meant I had to buy health insurance. Virginia has no insurance exchange, so that meant dealing with healthcare.gov. On the plus side, there was only one place to shop for health insurance, but that didn't make the choices any easier. With my income and the subsidy provided, my lowest insurance cost was ~$100 a year month for health insurance with a deductible of $6000 -- just below the individual spending cap.
Let me repeat that: I'd be paying $100 a year month so I can pay $6000 a year if and when I get sick.
I know I'm not invincible. I had a bout of bronchitis last year around the holiday season. I was worried it was something worse. The hospital had a generous charity care program that covered 70% of my costs, which covered the chest X-Ray that said it was just bronchitis. And truth be told, it was reassuring to have that kind of care, even if the doctor charged me $90 for a five-minute visit after an hour's wait and had the bedside manner of a turnip. So I can understand the value of having health insurance.
But in the year since that scare, a lot's happened -- my phone died and I had to get a new one on a payment plan. My student loan payments increased. My rent went up 10%, the biggest increase I had since I started renting that apartment. And my wages have stayed roughly the same. And, on top of all of this, people want me to pay an extra $1200 a year to an insurance company who will support me less than the hospital did when I wasn't insured?
I realize that that program probably won't be around for much longer. And that there are people worse off than me -- the "young invincibles" that kos and everyone else here lumps in with the ideologues and ignoramuses are the ones that are also chronically unemployed and underemployed, even today. They surely can afford it less than I can.
But the bottom line is this: I can't afford to buy into what is essentially junk insurance. Despite all of the promises, it still exists, with a goverment seal of approval. And despite all of the people who say that even though the current system sucks, it will get better because of The Market (TM), or nonprofit insurance companies (which don't exist out here), or whatever...it still sucks right now for a large group of people. Unfortunately for the program, many of those people are the ones who were expected to subsidize the rest.
Perhaps, before embarking on this grand vindication of the free market, the administration should have made economic conditions better for those expected to subsidize the rest of the insurance pool, or maybe made the insurance more equitable. But apparently they didn't think that far ahead. Or perhaps they simply didn't give a damn.
Regardless, I wait for a better solution to present itself.