Immediately take what action, specifically, in your ACA hypothetical? Honestly asking.

Best I can come up with is "hope your kids don't get sick", followed by "ignore calls from debt collectors on that emergency room bill".

Reading the news obsessively and buying into the culture war actually does nothing to make those strategies more effective. Just saps energy that could be spent elsewhere.

Fair question. It would depend on the individual, lots of people would also probably run to their doctors and get increased length/dosage prescriptions so they have some emergency supplies. Younger low income people might just cancel their insurance entirely, those with pre-existing conditions would have to consider employment changes potentially (contractor -> full time) and similarly for those on the marketplace.

Edit: To get on my soapbox a bit here, I think people are being a bit black and white as usual. Yea, you don't need to read every political opinion piece by Fox, CNN and NYT, but you also should read more than exactly zero. Neither of these extremes can possibly be optimal for everyone (or anyone probably). HN really likes the narrative "Title: X is problematic and we should fix it. Top Comment: Well I completely stopped X because it was bad for me and now everything is awesome and I'm a 10x dev!" but it's never really that simple.

Check out "hate, inc" by Taibbi. He's self publishing it online. It's been great "bullshit detector enhancement" for me, re: the media.

Knowledge about the Individual Mandate matters a lot to lower income folks. We have to follow the news to learn about such things, whereas the privileged techie does not.

Can you explain your tax planning situation around the individual mandate? Like, did you, as a low income hacker news reader, read something on the news that you used to save money when filing your own taxes?

Yes: I decided to avoid the penalty. Had I not known about the penalty, I would have owed it in ignorance.