By Dan VanDerMolen -
The impact of the Affordable Care Act has been the complete opposite from what was promised.
The ACA promised we could keep our plan. For the 20 years prior to the ACA, we were able to purchase affordable health insurance and never had a policy cancelled. Like millions of others we didn’t gain health insurance coverage through the ACA we lost our coverage because of it.
The ACA promised we could keep our doctors. The new ACA plans issued in 2016 gutted the number of doctors and hospitals available to us. We lost doctors, prescription coverage, and access to the specialists at the teaching hospitals in Chicago.
The ACA promised to lower costs. In 2017, the silver plan we have will increase 45% from $18,000 to $26,000. Next year our insurance will be almost double, what we paid prior to the government getting involved in making it “affordable.” Like millions of others, we don’t receive a subsidy for our insurance instead; we have paid over $2000 in taxes on our premiums in the last three years. Our policies in the past never included a tax. Under the ACA, if we don’t buy coverage we are fined. If we do buy coverage, we are taxed.
The ACA promised financial protection. Up until 2016, every insurance plan I had limited our out of pocket expenses. Now our family out of network deductible is $45,000 with no cap on the out of pocket expenses at all. Under the ACA, we are left more vulnerable to bankruptcy then we have ever been.
We have suffered through cancelled plans, broken websites, broken promises and Washington inaction to fix the mess they created. We are left with an inferior plan, that lacks bankruptcy protection, a much narrower network and most of all it is unaffordable.
Dan VanDerMolen is from Elmhurst, Illinois
