My family’s journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013. I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us. We are a family of four, with two little boys’ ages seven years old and three years old. My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively. We have been with the same two companies for those years. We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us. We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us.
On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama. When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement. Our premiums for the Blue Saver Silver would now be $753.26. This included the ACA tax but did not include the additional $75.00 we would need to pay in order to keep dental for me and my husband. So we would need to pay total $828.26 to keep health and dental insurance for the four of us. This payment is roughly $64.00 less than what we pay for our mortgage each month. I was outraged that anyone thought we could afford this. Sure we have some savings, but with that price tag we would whittle it down to almost nothing very quickly. I consider savings as a rainy day fund, a start to saving for the kid’s college, our retirement, etc. I never dreamed in a million years we would need to use it to pay our insurance premiums each month – how in the world could this help the economy too?
Read the whole thing. It's a nightmare.
Graphic via R.J. Matson
I hope it does go viral too. Have you read her follow up blog post? They are paying less.
ReplyDeletekarrikinder.blogspot.com/2014/01/an-update-to-my-open-letter-to-obama.html
Great, except this part:
ReplyDelete"Please, do believe, I am incredibly grateful that they have coverage now and I am indebted to those who made this possible. However, I truly hate the fact that it is not how we wanted them to be covered. We don’t want to have to be reliant on the government, which is what makes my heart so heavy today. I think to myself, just a month ago, we were paying for our whole family to have private insurance and now today that is not the case."
Which is a large part of why conservatives hate it.