The 'pre-existing condition' clause that Obamacare did away with was only applicable for patients who do not have continuous health insurance coverage. In other words, the reason this was ever an issue is because health insurance companies wanted to avoid the situation that people who never had insurance sign up for coverage only after they've gotten sick.

If you already have health insurance and you change jobs, there's no issue with changing providers.

I'm not in the "Obamacare is completely useless" camp, I'm in the "Obamacare solved the wrong problem" camp.

But premiums and copays are completely out of hand. The supplies my son receives for his insulin pump and glucose monitor cost the insurance company $5,780 (per quarter.) The supplies are not complex and likely cost Medtronic no more than a couple of hundred dollars to produce. There's nearly zero competition in this space because of vendor lock-in (I can't source these supplies from anyone else.)

This latest year our premiums didn't go up at all (yay!) but our coverage got worse (same plan) so instead of paying $0 out of pocket for his quarterly supplies we now pay $700. Prescription/doctor-visit copays have gone up too.

The sad reality is if you're sick and not rich in this country you're fucked. I'm not rich, but I happen to be a software engineer nowhere near SV and have a decent (contract) job, so we can swing it for now. But if I was making $90k, we'd be in trouble.