Quote:I work for one of the largest consulting firms in the world that deals with this and was actually involved in helping congress deal with the regulations once the law was passed.  I'm not parroting anything from any news network.  I deal with this on a daily basis.  Feel free to PM me if you'd like to know my qualifications. 

 

The costs were artificially low to begin with.  The insurance companies have pretty much all been promised bailouts once they start losing money.  You seem to be ignoring the double digit rate increases that are happening around the country as insurance companies submit their premiums to the states.  You also conveniently leave out a a few things about that more affordable coverage, including the ridiculously high deductibles that are attached to many of those low cost plans. 

 

That's just the tip of the iceberg, but hey, you're the expert.  I'm just getting my info from Fox News. 

I don't really care to engage in a game of "who's bigger" over qualifications, I'll just presume I'm dealing with someone as educated on the topic as I am.

 

The costs were artificially low, you won't get any argument from me there, but I'm not seeing the same double-digit increases, particularly in Texas. Florida is getting a little pricier, but again, not enough to slaughter the market, and Denver was a crap ACA market from the start due to the state's reliance on Medicaid.

 

Lots of bronze-level plans have $3,000-6,000 deductibles, sometimes even as high as $12,000. My work is based upon the existing insurance offered by the company in the case of a conversion to ACA, or upon common coverage levels in the market if it's a company that hadn't previously offered insurance. I have never presented a quote with a deductible higher than $6,000, and that was in a case where the employer's existing plan was so awful that their group deductible was $10k. As a matter of practice, I won't recommend a higher-deductible plan than what is currently in place unless the premium difference makes up the deductible. For example, if the employer currently has a plan with an employee share of $200/month and a $2,000 deductible, one of the options I look at might be a plan that costs $125 per month with a $3,000 deductible. Ultimately, the employees get to choose their own plans. I'm only there to present them with options. Typically, I end up in silver-tier plans with a deductible between $2,000 and $3,000. Based upon personal experience with the ACA, I'm not seeing the type of disaster-level cost overruns and rate hikes that are being talked about.

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