Obamacare
and
me

October 15, 2013 -- I am in that much-discussed 10% of Americans who buy their own health care insurance. (The others get it from their employers (55%), from the government (31%), or don't have it at all (4%) [source: Wikipedia].)

A letter last week from Kaiser informed me that my health care insurance policy premium would, starting 1/1/2014, increase by 113%. That's not a typo. It will more than double from $261/mo to $556/mo.

This raises some questions. Can I afford that? Also, I wonder whether my old policy was what Consumer Reports called junk health insurance and Mother Jones called lousy health plans. Kaiser didn't mention the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") but it's clear that my old plan didn't satisfy the new law's minimum standards. Kaiser had been selling me junk.

Having always regarded Kaiser as ethical and high quality, frankly, I'm surprised. The good news is that at last they are required to be so.

Nonetheless, I now find myself in a quandary. I have not yet decided how to proceed. Stick with Kaiser? Shop around? Perhaps even on the much-maligned www.healthcare.gov web site? Fortunately for us in California, we have www.coveredca.com. What to buy? How much to pay? I'm working on it. Stay tuned.

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