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Comment by ethana | Hacker News Reader

Whenever a congressional law passes, just take the opposite view of the Act name and it shall be true. For example, there's nothing affordable about the ACA. My old healthcare plan was eliminated and replaced with a more expansive and less beneficial because of ACA regulations.

Then for people who are forced into ACA plans, they'll have their rates raised conveniently after the Nov 4 midterm elections...

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> more expansive and less beneficial

Really? Reporters and politicians have searched for these mysterious slighted people who have had their premiums go up for the exact same plan. You should call the O'Reilley factor, you could be a star!

A lot of people could not buy crippled insurance plans with insanely high deductibles and severe limits on coverage, because those were outlawed by the plan. Also, some people were bumped from subsidized plans to fend on the open market, but that's shitty employers taking advantage of their employees, and not the fault of the ACA.

Finally, with the heavy subsidies to your premiums, the same plan usually cost less under the ACA. You could however talk about the cost of insurance in 5 years when the subsidies start to wear off, but, hey, I imagine the republican leadership has plenty of ideas to help the common folk with that.

I would imagine most/all young (under 35 - I'm 30, personally, and had same experience as GP), self-employed people making a decent amount of money (such that they don't get subsidies) have had this experience. The plans never match up fully, but I had a high deductible "catastrophic" plan pre-ACA and for the equivalent coverage I a.) had to apply for an exemption to even get the "catastrophic" plan through ACA and b.) it still cost significantly more for a higher deductible.

Now as you note I do get certain benefits with this plan I didn't get with my other one- namely a couple doctors visits a year when my other one was only one every 2- but I had a catastrophic plan for a reason and my premium more than doubled under the ACA. Beneficial to me (and likely the GP) is being able to pay only for coverage we actually want- not additional "benefits" that we don't plan on using and would rather pay out of pocket for.

What about yearly or by incident payout limits? Like max 20000$ per year in treatment or the like. That's what most of the plans canceled by the ACA were limited by.

My plan had no lifetime limits, generally awesome coverage, HDHP, and was ended. I don't believe it's because it was non-compliant, but because it was no longer economic to underwrite with 1) guaranteed issue 2) substantial minimum/preventive benefits paid per year (so, essentially a guarantee of $300-400 in reimbursements on a $1200 premium per year, with some odds of $100k or $1mm or whatever payouts in rare cases too.)

My insurer got out of the individual market.

Are you sure you wouldn't have been dropped when a catastrophe happened? Before the ACA that wasn't illegal.

So, I was going to make the point that this is only true for the controversial bills (a point worth making -- most laws are tremendously boring), but scrolling through the laws passed by this congress I found an example that makes your point perfectly:

Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013

It turns out this law doesn't authorize or reauthorize ANY violence against women. It seems to do the exact opposite of what it says -- it is primarily about _punishing_ violence against women.

That is all, continue being outraged. I'm sorry your insurance costs more, that does suck.

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