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It's Obamacare open enrollment time of the year again! Hurry up, deadlines are looming [1]
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Date: 2022-12-06
Obamacare is better and more affordable than ever for enrollees now. They fixed the “family glitch” that has been plaguing the program for more than eight years. When lawmakers were writing the law, they found what they thought might be a relatively harmless saving: people who had access to health care through their jobs that was too expensive could get subsidies to help pay for ACA coverage—but only for themselves, and not their families.
That cut millions of family members out of affordable coverage. Employers are generally pretty generous when it comes to providing coverage for individuals, paying about 83% of the cost of insurance for them. But on average, they only pick up 73% of the cost for families. The out-of-pocket cost of covering a family could be three times coverage for an individual in an employer plan. But that’s gone now, so some 5.1 million people—more than half of them children—can now be covered affordably. The IRS predicted that as many as 2.3 million people would newly enroll in ACA coverage, and as many as 700,000 previously uninsured people would sign up.
We don’t know yet whether those kinds of numbers will materialize, but because there are so many great deals to be had it’s possible; again thanks to Biden and the Democrats for the expanded premium subsidies first introduced in 2021 via the American Rescue Plan, and then continued in the Inflation Reduction Act.
So as always, the message is that there are very affordable plans out there, including some very good ones that might cost absolutely nothing in premiums. That’s also why, as always, it makes sense for people already enrolled in ACA coverage to shop again this year rather than just reupping their current plan. It’s also possible that current plans have changed, and you could be rolled over into something that doesn’t fit your needs. It’s not any fun shopping for insurance, but there are plenty of tools to at least make it relatively painless.
The Biden administration has made a huge investment of nearly $100 million in setting up the system of navigators to assist people in enrolling. They’re funding quadruple the number of helpers from last year, so there’s really no excuse for putting it off. You can get connected with a navigator at HealthCare.gov, which is also where you can sign up.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/6/2140410/-It-s-Obamacare-open-enrollment-time-of-the-year-again-Hurry-up-deadlines-are-looming
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