Sticker shock

It’s health insurance enrollment time again. I’m enrolling us, because let’s face it, I hate freedom. I’ve been watching the news, and I therefore know that Obamacare is a vile plot to make wealthy people pay a lot more for healthcare so that the undeserving poor can shirk their duty to die quietly of treatable ailments.

We’re not part of the 1% — not by a long shot — but I think we’re in the 20%, if that’s a thing, so apparently it’s up to us to pay for those single mothers. Over the last few months I had read that the middle class were going to get squeezed, because we would not qualify for any kind of subsidy because we make more than 4x the federal poverty level. Yes, people with pre-existing conditions on group plans would definitely lose out, getting less coverage and having higher costs. But how much higher?

The predictions were pretty dire — premiums were said to be going up by an average of 26% in Texas. Or maybe 37%, for middle aged people. Yes, 37% for middle aged men. Or maybe 88%, for middle aged men with pre-existing conditions opting for bronze-level or equivalent coverage in Texas. In fact, according to the experts at the Heritage Foundation, I could expect a robust 91% increase in insurance premiums.

So obviously, it was with trepidation that I read about the options available to me. Perhaps I would have to stop paying for the best available plan with the ultra low deductibles? I clicked through and saw the final cost. It has gone up by a massive, punitive 10% compared to 2012.

Obviously I am shocked, shocked to find out that so many dire predictions made by right-wing think tanks appear not to be accurate.