If you live in California, or even if you don’t and want an idea about how the Obamacare plans work, take a look at this. Whenever anybody tries to compare a non ACA exchange plan with the approved ACA exchange plans, take the time to find out what the deductible on the non-ACA plan is.

In a lot of cases I’ve seen people tout plans they think are or were cheaper before ACA while conveniently leaving out many important details. Many of these so called cheaper plans require a thousand, fifteen hundred dollars or more in up front deductibles to be paid before the patient gets any benefit from the plan in things like x-rays, lab testing, hospitalization / urgent care and ER visits. A lot of them use the term “copay after deductible” meaning they’ll stick you for more money even after that first deductible has been reached.

A lot of the older plans have disappeared or had their prices go up and people will tell you that’s because of Obamacare. What they won’t tell you is that with that increase in price comes a requisite increase in coverage, most of those old cheap plans had lifetime benefit caps. If you exceeded that cap through some kind of devastating illness then you were on your own and forever fucked because of your now “pre-existing” condition.