Our country can afford it because it’s the last reliable source of privatized growth in revenue growth per year left in our economy. (A.I., by comparison, has merely a one-time effect of reducing headcount per dollar earned, and the Internet stripped away 99% of consumer-originated postal mail so there’s no growth left from privatizing that anymore.) So from a political standpoint it’s either maintain the health insurance nightmare or preside over the collapse of oligarchical capitalism.
That’s what this article fails to comprehend: the problem isn’t that health care is being done poorly, but that it’s the only source of GDP growth in the U.S. economy. All of the points it makes are fine points, but they’re irrelevant to the cause of the problem, so they will have little effect on the problem.
robocat 1 days ago [-]
> last reliable source of privatized growth
But is it productive growth?
Perhaps we should increase GDP by employing people to smash windows and burn down houses?
altairprime 1 days ago [-]
Is that a growth strategy for the second derivative of profit? Asking for a friend :)
2 days ago [-]
KellyCriterion 2 days ago [-]
I'm in a EU country, in total I pay also around 15.000 EUR per year
monospaced 2 days ago [-]
In Germany a couple of two software developers would earn above the threshold of ca. 70k EUR per year each and therefore pay each around 15.000 EUR per year, which would be higher than the number given in the article ($27.000 for a family in US vs. around $35.000 in Germany currency converted). This applies for the public insurance where adults each have to be insured but kids are included for free.
People with lower incomes pay proportionately less, government employees and high earners can also switch to private insurance where they get much better service but for non-government employees this comes with risks and has to be done at a younger age.
claudiulodro 2 days ago [-]
You're comparing what appears to be the MAXIMUM cost of German health insurance with the AVERAGE cost of US health insurance.
altairprime 2 days ago [-]
I prefer to say, the MEAN cost, on this topic; it’s the same thing but more opinion-forward :)
KellyCriterion 2 days ago [-]
Caught me!!!!
I didnt read the article before sending my comment! :-)
OK, if its for a whole family, then yes: Germany is more expensive, I can see now - 27000 USD for a 4-head family is acutally quite cheep, if i add up those numbers?
ThePowerOfFuet 2 days ago [-]
[citation needed]
KellyCriterion 2 days ago [-]
Not sure if I understand you correctly:
Do you mean some more numbers or the link to a healthcare-cost-calculator?
burnt-resistor 1 days ago [-]
Bikeshedding about the style of the hair of the person involuntarily buggering you.
Proper healthcare is needed, because this one is unfair and too expensive compared to everywhere else with worse outcomes.
slackfan 23 hours ago [-]
Proper healthcare is me going to the doctor and paying them an hourly rate to diagnose/work on me, please do not conflate it with health insurance.
(Here's a hint, it's actually quite affordable right now if you go to a GP out of pocket).
burnt-resistor 5 hours ago [-]
> (Here's a hint, it's actually quite affordable right now if you go to a GP out of pocket).
You're wrong and you're conflating your myopic perspective with the experiences of everyone else in the world in other countries. It's only "cheap" where you live. Here where I live, it's insanely expensive with (very expensive) insurance or without insurance (bankruptcy risk) and the average care is shit too.
billy99k 2 days ago [-]
The affordable care act doubled most people's insurance over night (This happened to me and almost everyone I know). Nobody wants to mention this, because it makes their side look bad.
Until we can admit where there are problems, there will never be a solution.
jdlshore 2 days ago [-]
That doesn’t pass the sniff test. I was self-employed and self-insured when the ACA took effect and my premiums immediately dropped when I purchased through the Marketplace (and it wasn’t subsidized).
It sounds like you either had junk insurance or you’re exaggerating things to score points.
graybeardhacker 2 days ago [-]
I find it VERY likely they had a junk policy. This is one of the most important things the ACA did, it defined what could be considered health insurance. Before the ACA, a company could sell you a policy that essentially covered nothing. Usually those junk policies had cleverly worded agreements that hid the fact that nothing was covered (pre-existing conditions, restrictive networks, carve-outs for expensive treatments, etc).
Since the majority of people don't run into those issues, they are blissfully unaware that if/when they have a major medical event they are under-insured.
antonymoose 2 days ago [-]
When the ACA plans first came online in South Carolina, I switched over immediately. I was paying something like $300 per month as a young healthy single male with my small company plan. I got a Marketplace plan for about $120 per month. The next year my insurer went out of business but I found another insurer in the 200s, barely cheaper. The following year this insurer also went under. I was now left with Blue Cross as my only real option charging I believe $350 per month and this continued to rise year on year, very painful for me when I was launching a startup with a minimal salary draw. Maybe your state is different but for me it killed numerous companies and left me with expensive, low quality options.
jdlshore 2 days ago [-]
Yes, health insurance costs rise every year. Partly due to increasing costs, but also due to the age of the insured.
The question isn’t whether the ACA raised costs—those were always going to go up. The question is whether a the ACA made them go up less than not having it. For me, the before and after trend was remarkable. And I had higher quality insurance without lifetime maximums or arbitrary exclusions.
Republicans did their level best to neuter the bill and prevent Democrats from having a “win,” and for the most part, I’d say they succeeded. The lack of a public option and the removal of mandatory coverage were both important parts of making it work well. But in the first 5 years or so, it was definitely an improvement. I think it could be again… if Republicans cared more about serving the country than pandering to their base.
fellowniusmonk 2 days ago [-]
Over the course of my life I have seen every profession but one go through boom and bust cycles.
I've seen attorneys, professors traders, plumbers, programmers, accounting, all go through demand cycles.
But never MDs
It is my dream that before I die I see a bust cycle on MDs where the growth of supply exceeds the demand.
Uber or Airbnb for medical care is so needed, why not break some laws to reveal how protectionist the whole industry is?
I'd gladly book a "Parody Doctor" or whatever it takes if it cost 2/5ths the price.
xhkkffbf 2 days ago [-]
> those were always going to go up
No. That wasn't the promise. Obama said that his plan was going to cut a family's bills by $2500.
Now you may say that inflation has to creep in and I think that's fair. If oil rises in price, that affects everything. But the premise was always that the magic of the ACA would lower premiums.
collingreen 2 days ago [-]
I recall the "magic" of the aca actually being focused on junk insurance so bad they look like scams, a marketplace to facilitate apples-to-apples competition, and most importantly, making it illegal to deny coverage to people because of genetic tests or public/stolen information like that (a great thing to see the 23&me breach coming).
My impression was it would be painful in a lot of ways but we need better competition and better protection in order to have the private insurance industry actually work for people instead of abuse them and health insurance is too important (and complicated, and too much history of dishonesty) for laissez faire.
xhkkffbf 2 days ago [-]
Passes the test of my freelancer friends. They said at lunch that the long term change has been dramatic. What cost $300/m before the ACA turned to $3000/m today. These are all through the local Blue Cross. We talked about the junk policy idea. Certainly the post-ACA policies have some improvements like no pre-existing conditions, but it's pretty much a tangerine-to-oranges comparison.
Maybe yours dropped immediately, but I'm sure it's up quite a bit since then. You may say that's just inflation and that's part of it, but I think the deeper point is that the ACA is not containing the inflation. And that was one of the promises.
jqpabc123 2 days ago [-]
The fundamental problem is the very idea of private "health insurance".
Market forces naturally create low rates for those who don't need insurance and unaffordable rates for those who do. But over time, everyone gravitates from the former to the latter.
The "free market" does not offer a practical solution to every problem. Tariffs are an open admission of this basic fact.
aleph_minus_one 2 days ago [-]
The problem rather is the insane amount of red tape involved if you want to set up your own health insurance company. Thus hardly any competition for the established player arises.
The result is what any arbitrary textbook about economy will tell you: if there are large barriers to entry into a market (i.e. the opposite of "free market"), the customer won't get the positive consequences of a free market, but instead oligopolies will form - with their negative consequences.
jqpabc123 2 days ago [-]
There are lots of health insurance companies operating in the USA. United Health is the largest but they only have a 15% market share.
All these companies follow suit with the market forces described above. They all want to insure young healthy people and deny old sick people --- simply because they make more money by doing so.
Over time, everyone (including you) will naturally gravitate from young and healthy to old and sick --- aka uninsurable.
Are you content for yourself or your family to be uninsured when they need it most --- after a lifetime of paying premiums? This is what private, for-profit health insurance manifests.
This is not due to "red tape" or lack of competition but is a fundamental and unavoidable characteristic of the "free market" itself.
aleph_minus_one 2 days ago [-]
>
All these companies follow suit with the market forces described above. They all want to insure young healthy people and deny old sick people --- simply because they make more money by doing so.
A private health insurance company is based on the idea that if you are young, you pay a lot more so that an actuarial reserve is built, which is then reduced again when you age. This means that if you want fair premiums when you are old, you will have to pay a lot larger premium in the young age.
Concerning your claim:
"They all want to insure young healthy people and deny old sick people --- simply because they make more money by doing so."
Insurance companies don't make more money when they insure young vs old people - but they will just calculate risk-appropriate premiums for each group. If you start your insurance coverage at a health insurance company when you are already old, no actuarial reserve has been built up (during the years when you were young), so the premiums will of course be much larger.
jqpabc123 2 days ago [-]
no actuarial reserve has been built up
This is laughable.
Health insurance companies don't have no steenkin "actuarial reserve". Inventing one is an act of rhetorical desperation on your part.
They only thing these companies consider or respond to is next quarter's profits.
aleph_minus_one 2 days ago [-]
>
Health insurance companies don't have no steenkin "actuarial reserve". Inventing one is an act of rhetorical desperation on your part.
This is how private health insurance companies work in Germany and many other countries (more precisely for Germany "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance in the form of life insurance); formally, in Germany there also exists "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Schadenversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance according to the type of indemnity insurance)).
Facts:
- I have already worked with certified actuaries, and I am thus very certain that building an actuarial reserve which is then phased out when you get older [in German: Auf- und Abbau der Deckungsrückstellung (for life insurance) und Altersrückstellung (for health insurance) (in English, the term "actuarial reserve" is used for both kinds of reserves)]) is how the mathematics of life and private health insurance companies works (OK, formally only for the kind of health insurance that in German is called "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance in the form of life insurance))
- if you still don't believe my claims, just read a good textbook about insurance of persons
scott00 2 days ago [-]
The key difference seems to be German private health insurance contracts are long-term affairs. Multi-year, or perhaps even lifetime? US health insurance contracts are typically a year at a time. So German companies have to reserve for costs projected to occur far in the future because they are liable for them, while US companies have no idea if their customer will still be around in 20 years.
My guess would be there's a healthy dollop of regulation pushing the German insurance market into that shape, otherwise you would probably see short-term insurers outcompeting long-term insurers since they wouldn't have to do old-age reserves and could therefore charge lower premiums. Consumers tend not to be nearly as good at rationally planning for long term expenditures as are actuaries.
aleph_minus_one 1 days ago [-]
There exist both types of health insurances in Germany:
"Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung" (health insurance in the form of life insurance) and "Krankenversicherung nach Art der Schadenversicherung" (health insurance in the form of indemnity insurance).
The first one is basically an alternative to the state-mandated health insurance, while the latter one is mostly intended for more specialized health services like for example dental replacement.
There is a regulation that once you are in a "Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung", the health insurance company is not allowed to cancel the contract with you, but on the other hand for this restriction the health insurance company is allowed to "adjust" premiums (nearly always that means "increase premiums") if the medical costs for the agreed treatments rise (which they commonly do).
Thus having a (near-certain) cashflow over the lifetime of the whole insured person (who can only under very special circumstances get out of the insurance treaty) is quite attractive for the insurance company.
> otherwise you would probably see short-term insurers outcompeting long-term insurers since they wouldn't have to do old-age reserves and could therefore charge lower premiums
You must not compare the current premiums, but the amount of premiums that you will pay over the whole lifetime. Here, the situation is completely different.
I think considering the huge amount of money (for premiums and medical costs) that is involved here, it can only be explained with stupidity to just compare current premiums in the young age: it is very well-known that the whole actuarial reserve that the insurance company built up from the premiums of a huge part of your lifetime will be spent for medical costs in just the last few years of your life.
It is thus a really macabre truth that if we would just let patients with cancer or another expensive disease die instead of giving them expensive treatments for just few additional years it would save an insane amount of money in the health system.
everforward 2 days ago [-]
I don’t think that really exists in a literal sense of “your policy has a reserve of money to pay out for you”.
I think it exists in the same way social security does: money from people who pay in but don’t withdraw goes to people who do withdraw. There’s probably some reserve, but I’d guess it’s thin because withdrawals should be fairly predictable for large insurers.
aleph_minus_one 1 days ago [-]
> There’s probably some reserve, but I’d guess it’s thin because withdrawals should be fairly predictable for large insurers.
At least in the EU, by Solvency II, insurance companies are obliged to fulfill prescribed solvency ratios (i.e. have sufficient capital resources available). I would strongly assume that there exist similar regulations in the USA.
everforward 11 hours ago [-]
There are, but I would consider them fairly thin. If I'm reading right, and I may not be, the US only requires a solvency ratio of 1.45. I never worked in health insurance, but I did work for a P&C insurance company and I believe we had assets far in excess of that but kept close to the minimum in liquid assets (returns on investing premiums we hadn't paid out yet was the majority of our profit).
AlotOfReading 2 days ago [-]
There's around a thousand organizations in the US that have gone through the paperwork to set up as a health insurance company and continue to file paperwork to that effect.
silverquiet 2 days ago [-]
I gained insurance overnight because of the ACA after not being able to afford it.
ChrisRR 2 days ago [-]
As a non-american this is the first I'm hearing of this. I would've thought if the majority of americans' health insurance had double overnight then there would've been massive uproar.
Can you explain what's happened?
2 days ago [-]
nicole_express 2 days ago [-]
I wonder if this is a regional issue; didn't do anything of the sort for me and people I know in Massachusetts, but there the Affordable Care Act wasn't that different than the existing "Romneycare" state regulation. In cases where state regulation was much lesser I guess it likely had a bigger impact.
slackfan 2 days ago [-]
The health insurance companies were given massive government subsidies to insure the previously (theoretically) uninsurable with no real provisions to cap rate hikes for anybody, and no alternative plan (public alternative that was originally part of the bill was killed). Large corporations received a captive market where people HAD to purchase health insurance (or pay a relatively onerous-at-the-time fine).
Insurance companies wrote for, edited, and lobbied around most of the bill as it was passed.
E: A fun downstream effect of it was that employer-provided insurance rates also went through the roof.
triceratops 2 days ago [-]
He's exaggerating. It wasn't literally overnight but over several years.
AlotOfReading 2 days ago [-]
The ACA was intended to reduce the rate of rate increases, not reduce the cost overall. The proper comparison is to what the rates would have been without the ACA.
As usual, actual studies are all over the map on this. The white house said it was successful at that. NBER said it wasn't, but rates didn't double for a long time. We know rates of large increases went down for a few years, but small increases became nearly universal to compensate.
jmathai 2 days ago [-]
The two times I did not have employer sponsored health care AND $0 income, the ACA plans were more expensive than getting a plan directly from the insurance company. It never costed me $27,000 though.
Most recently, in 2024, I had medical and dental coverage for my family of 6 for around $1,200/mo - roughly half what's quoted but again, family of 6. Wasn't the greatest insurance but it would have kept us from financial ruin in case of a catastrophic event which is all I expect from insurance anyways.
brianwawok 2 days ago [-]
I assume you were young. Direct was generally cheaper for young people and ACA cheaper for older people. Which pushed the average age of ACA up and then raises the price of ACA. It’s a mess!
jmathai 2 days ago [-]
45 years young.
trashface 2 days ago [-]
I can only speak for myself and not "most people" but before the ACA I was actually denied for health insurance - as in, insurers would not sell me insurance at ANY price.
After ACA went into effect, I got insurance and it was reasonable - I didn't even need to claim a subsidy for first few years, until I lost my job.
brianwawok 2 days ago [-]
Did not change my rates a bit. And it gave me a fallback plan if I lost my job or something.
slackfan 2 days ago [-]
Nearly tripled in my case, but I've literally been either told that that was a conspiracy theory (still flabbergasted as to how?), or been argued against with some vague appeal-to-emotions with regards to "but the poor people without health coverage". I wasn't exactly just out of minimum wage territory living paycheck to paycheck as a junior sysadmin at the time either, but who's counting, right?
dominotw 2 days ago [-]
ok its appeal to emotion but why is it vague?
slackfan 2 days ago [-]
Because at the time I could name about 20 people who lived at or below minimum wage with or without healthcare insurance and the ones that would conduct this appeal could not.
2 days ago [-]
Rendered at 12:30:45 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
That’s what this article fails to comprehend: the problem isn’t that health care is being done poorly, but that it’s the only source of GDP growth in the U.S. economy. All of the points it makes are fine points, but they’re irrelevant to the cause of the problem, so they will have little effect on the problem.
But is it productive growth?
Perhaps we should increase GDP by employing people to smash windows and burn down houses?
People with lower incomes pay proportionately less, government employees and high earners can also switch to private insurance where they get much better service but for non-government employees this comes with risks and has to be done at a younger age.
OK, if its for a whole family, then yes: Germany is more expensive, I can see now - 27000 USD for a 4-head family is acutally quite cheep, if i add up those numbers?
Do you mean some more numbers or the link to a healthcare-cost-calculator?
Proper healthcare is needed, because this one is unfair and too expensive compared to everywhere else with worse outcomes.
(Here's a hint, it's actually quite affordable right now if you go to a GP out of pocket).
You're wrong and you're conflating your myopic perspective with the experiences of everyone else in the world in other countries. It's only "cheap" where you live. Here where I live, it's insanely expensive with (very expensive) insurance or without insurance (bankruptcy risk) and the average care is shit too.
Until we can admit where there are problems, there will never be a solution.
It sounds like you either had junk insurance or you’re exaggerating things to score points.
Since the majority of people don't run into those issues, they are blissfully unaware that if/when they have a major medical event they are under-insured.
The question isn’t whether the ACA raised costs—those were always going to go up. The question is whether a the ACA made them go up less than not having it. For me, the before and after trend was remarkable. And I had higher quality insurance without lifetime maximums or arbitrary exclusions.
Republicans did their level best to neuter the bill and prevent Democrats from having a “win,” and for the most part, I’d say they succeeded. The lack of a public option and the removal of mandatory coverage were both important parts of making it work well. But in the first 5 years or so, it was definitely an improvement. I think it could be again… if Republicans cared more about serving the country than pandering to their base.
I've seen attorneys, professors traders, plumbers, programmers, accounting, all go through demand cycles.
But never MDs
It is my dream that before I die I see a bust cycle on MDs where the growth of supply exceeds the demand.
Uber or Airbnb for medical care is so needed, why not break some laws to reveal how protectionist the whole industry is?
I'd gladly book a "Parody Doctor" or whatever it takes if it cost 2/5ths the price.
No. That wasn't the promise. Obama said that his plan was going to cut a family's bills by $2500.
Now you may say that inflation has to creep in and I think that's fair. If oil rises in price, that affects everything. But the premise was always that the magic of the ACA would lower premiums.
My impression was it would be painful in a lot of ways but we need better competition and better protection in order to have the private insurance industry actually work for people instead of abuse them and health insurance is too important (and complicated, and too much history of dishonesty) for laissez faire.
Maybe yours dropped immediately, but I'm sure it's up quite a bit since then. You may say that's just inflation and that's part of it, but I think the deeper point is that the ACA is not containing the inflation. And that was one of the promises.
Market forces naturally create low rates for those who don't need insurance and unaffordable rates for those who do. But over time, everyone gravitates from the former to the latter.
The "free market" does not offer a practical solution to every problem. Tariffs are an open admission of this basic fact.
The result is what any arbitrary textbook about economy will tell you: if there are large barriers to entry into a market (i.e. the opposite of "free market"), the customer won't get the positive consequences of a free market, but instead oligopolies will form - with their negative consequences.
All these companies follow suit with the market forces described above. They all want to insure young healthy people and deny old sick people --- simply because they make more money by doing so.
Over time, everyone (including you) will naturally gravitate from young and healthy to old and sick --- aka uninsurable.
Are you content for yourself or your family to be uninsured when they need it most --- after a lifetime of paying premiums? This is what private, for-profit health insurance manifests.
This is not due to "red tape" or lack of competition but is a fundamental and unavoidable characteristic of the "free market" itself.
A private health insurance company is based on the idea that if you are young, you pay a lot more so that an actuarial reserve is built, which is then reduced again when you age. This means that if you want fair premiums when you are old, you will have to pay a lot larger premium in the young age.
Concerning your claim:
"They all want to insure young healthy people and deny old sick people --- simply because they make more money by doing so."
Insurance companies don't make more money when they insure young vs old people - but they will just calculate risk-appropriate premiums for each group. If you start your insurance coverage at a health insurance company when you are already old, no actuarial reserve has been built up (during the years when you were young), so the premiums will of course be much larger.
This is laughable.
Health insurance companies don't have no steenkin "actuarial reserve". Inventing one is an act of rhetorical desperation on your part.
They only thing these companies consider or respond to is next quarter's profits.
This is how private health insurance companies work in Germany and many other countries (more precisely for Germany "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance in the form of life insurance); formally, in Germany there also exists "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Schadenversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance according to the type of indemnity insurance)).
Facts:
- I have already worked with certified actuaries, and I am thus very certain that building an actuarial reserve which is then phased out when you get older [in German: Auf- und Abbau der Deckungsrückstellung (for life insurance) und Altersrückstellung (for health insurance) (in English, the term "actuarial reserve" is used for both kinds of reserves)]) is how the mathematics of life and private health insurance companies works (OK, formally only for the kind of health insurance that in German is called "private Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung" (Google Translate: private health insurance in the form of life insurance))
- if you still don't believe my claims, just read a good textbook about insurance of persons
My guess would be there's a healthy dollop of regulation pushing the German insurance market into that shape, otherwise you would probably see short-term insurers outcompeting long-term insurers since they wouldn't have to do old-age reserves and could therefore charge lower premiums. Consumers tend not to be nearly as good at rationally planning for long term expenditures as are actuaries.
"Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung" (health insurance in the form of life insurance) and "Krankenversicherung nach Art der Schadenversicherung" (health insurance in the form of indemnity insurance).
The first one is basically an alternative to the state-mandated health insurance, while the latter one is mostly intended for more specialized health services like for example dental replacement.
There is a regulation that once you are in a "Krankenversicherung nach Art der Lebensversicherung", the health insurance company is not allowed to cancel the contract with you, but on the other hand for this restriction the health insurance company is allowed to "adjust" premiums (nearly always that means "increase premiums") if the medical costs for the agreed treatments rise (which they commonly do).
Thus having a (near-certain) cashflow over the lifetime of the whole insured person (who can only under very special circumstances get out of the insurance treaty) is quite attractive for the insurance company.
> otherwise you would probably see short-term insurers outcompeting long-term insurers since they wouldn't have to do old-age reserves and could therefore charge lower premiums
You must not compare the current premiums, but the amount of premiums that you will pay over the whole lifetime. Here, the situation is completely different.
I think considering the huge amount of money (for premiums and medical costs) that is involved here, it can only be explained with stupidity to just compare current premiums in the young age: it is very well-known that the whole actuarial reserve that the insurance company built up from the premiums of a huge part of your lifetime will be spent for medical costs in just the last few years of your life.
It is thus a really macabre truth that if we would just let patients with cancer or another expensive disease die instead of giving them expensive treatments for just few additional years it would save an insane amount of money in the health system.
I think it exists in the same way social security does: money from people who pay in but don’t withdraw goes to people who do withdraw. There’s probably some reserve, but I’d guess it’s thin because withdrawals should be fairly predictable for large insurers.
At least in the EU, by Solvency II, insurance companies are obliged to fulfill prescribed solvency ratios (i.e. have sufficient capital resources available). I would strongly assume that there exist similar regulations in the USA.
Can you explain what's happened?
Insurance companies wrote for, edited, and lobbied around most of the bill as it was passed.
E: A fun downstream effect of it was that employer-provided insurance rates also went through the roof.
As usual, actual studies are all over the map on this. The white house said it was successful at that. NBER said it wasn't, but rates didn't double for a long time. We know rates of large increases went down for a few years, but small increases became nearly universal to compensate.
Most recently, in 2024, I had medical and dental coverage for my family of 6 for around $1,200/mo - roughly half what's quoted but again, family of 6. Wasn't the greatest insurance but it would have kept us from financial ruin in case of a catastrophic event which is all I expect from insurance anyways.
After ACA went into effect, I got insurance and it was reasonable - I didn't even need to claim a subsidy for first few years, until I lost my job.