citydweller, the way I see it is that, at your age, you have no idea if you will incur a large unexpected medical bill tomorrow thru illness or accident. Spending just 24 hours or less as an inpatient admitted from a small regional hospital’s emergency room (ex: Scripps Chula Vista Med Cntr) can cost $8500 – $12,000 … that is AFTER their charges are reduced to your PPO rate. These charges can be MUCH higher in big city hospitals (ESP those with trauma centers). I don’t know if you live in or near dtn SD but a very high percentage of drivers (over 50%) living south of I-8 are inconsistently uninsured or under-insured as are an extremely high percentage of drivers residing south of Hwy 94 (over 75%). In any case, the medical payments on your auto policy covering YOU are likely very limited. If you get into an accident with one of these thousands of uninsured or underinsured drivers, you don’t want to have to worry about your quality or choice of care. You want your medical carrier to subrogate the auto carrier(s) involved for what they can get and then cover the rest without question, while they attempt to go after the responsible parties (if you are not at fault).
nsr is correct that you have to compare every single copay and covered item on your current policy to an exchange policy or plan, when the details are made available, in order to make an educated choice on what to do.
Keep in mind that if a proposed policy or plan on the exchange seems VERY reasonably priced, it is likely that the “sickest” masses who qualify for tax credits and who are on a tight budget will sign up for it. The way I understood the article I posted (above) is that the plans with the “sickest” planholders have the most propensity to increase their rates come 2015 or increase them the most.
We’ll know a whole lot more when the statistics by region are made public … hopefully sometime next year. That is, how many signed up for each plan available in a certain region, which metal-level of plan did they sign up for (if more than one was avail) and how many of those who signed up did so utilizing one of the four levels of tax credits.
… in October to find out if their indiv PPO plans are comparable to the ones they offer on the exchange for a lesser monthly premium than the ones they offer on CoveredCa if ordered off the exchange directly though them. This should be an apples-to-apples comparison and could very possibly cancel out any tax credits I might be eligible for if I sign up on the exchange.
I noticed that other states’ exchanges which I perused listed ALL their new indiv and small group (=<50 emps) plans in compliance with the ACA, whether offered ON or OFF their exchanges and discovered that comparable plans were up to $250 less per month for my age group than those same plans offered on the state’s exchange.
Because of this discovery, I believe it is entirely possible that carriers agreeing to offer plans on state exchanges have jacked up the price of those plans to account for the mass applications of currently uninsured “sick” or those with chronic conditions who are currently uninsured, nearly ALL of whom will use “tax credits” to pay most or all of their monthly premiums.
It will be interesting to see how this all fleshes out in the coming year and if the local provider groups (ex: Sharp Rees Stealy) who will accept most or all of the plans on the exchanges end up turning into the DMV for ALL their patients while attempting to serve many new patients who haven’t seen a doctor in decades.
