This happened to me. I had what is considered a "Cadillac plan" which my employer offered generously as a benefit. After ACA, the government began to tax that plan and our public company could not justify that while other companies in our market were offering much lower quality plans. Thus my medical spending rose by thousands of dollars per year (also thanks to an unfortunate @$3000 hospital stay but that would have cost me $250 on my old plan). The old plan did of course come with a lifetime max but obviously was not a factor at my age yet.

I think the ACA does good things for people who needed it. And generally I've been against repealing it, but only because there has not been an adequate replacement as part of the repeal, only "trust us, we'll do something great".

What was the lifetime max on this plan? It probably would have left people out in the cold when they most needed it. I don't think it's wrong to expect insurance to cover people when they most need it, which was largely not true with million dollar lifetime caps.

Even with the ACA, employers have the best of both worlds. Expensive older people are covered by the government, and anyone who gets to expensive can be shuffled off with a little cover and the joy of "at-will" employment.

The lifetime max was multiple millions, I don't remember the exact number. As I stated, it was just about the best policy available for any amount of money. There is no credible way to spin this as actually being worse for those employees. I like to hire "expensive older" engineers, so dialing healthcare benefits up to eleven was intended to attract that kind of employee.

All insurance policies have implicit lifetime maximums, unless the laws of economics and finance have been repealed.

> What was the lifetime max on this plan? It probably would have left people out in the cold when they most needed it. I don't think it's wrong to expect insurance to cover people when they most need it, which was largely not true with million dollar lifetime caps.

Note that lifetime caps are a lot more generous than what they have in say the UK, where you don’t get treatment if it costs more than $50-75k per year of extended life. (So to blow through a million dollars, the treatment would have to be expected to produce 15-20 years of extra healthy life. Most treatments offered when people “need it the most” can’t make that sort of promise).

> Note that lifetime caps are a lot more generous than what they have in say the UK, where you don’t get treatment if it costs more than $50-75k per year of extended life

Do you have any data for that? Sounds odd.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28983924. It’s not odd at all. It’s a basic thing that makes the UK’s health system work. US insurers (in the past) would piss away a half a million or a million on uncertain treatments. (And then the family would go out of pocket, go broke, and there would be an article on medical bankruptcies.) The UK doesn’t do that. Instead, it’s very aggressive about justifying costs with expected outcomes.

This happened with my employer as well. And this is/was before the "Cadillac tax" came into effect (I believe it's been pushed back to 2020 now).

This is exactly the point I was trying to make in my original comment. Really good healthcare plans (with minimal deductibles and great coverage) used to be a benefit that employers could reasonably provide. Employees/family members who got sick would get good coverage without going broke. Now the cost is of providing that kind of coverage is completely untenable.

I don’t see what the purpose of pointing out the fact of health insurance being cheaper when it doesn’t have to provide coverage for people who actually used healthcare. Goal is to provide all of society with healthcare, problem is voters didn’t want to pay with their tax dollars. Now they get to pay with their insurance premium dollars. There never was a free lunch, only people who were unable to get health insurance.