The problem here is that for some people's coverage to be lowered, impoverished people to be covered, and pre-existing conditions paid for, a bunch of young and healthy individuals (without families) are now required to sign up for insurance. And the cost of that insurance for those healthy individuals is now 2-4x more expensive than it would have been before Obamacare took place (obviously the money has to come from somewhere to balance it all out). *This is of course for the lower and mid level coverage plans, the higher end stuff reduces that margin between the pre and post levels - but not for everyone, and in some cases people are going to pay 15-20% of their TOTAL income for worse plans. And that's going to enrage those people.

Of course - that's the whole reason for the mandate. Similar to social security, there needs to be a pool of people paying into the system that are not using it. I don't agree with you that the plans will be worse though - maybe in some states, but certainly not here in Washington.

The Medical Loss Ratio part of the law also helps with that. Used to be that plans paid 75% - 80% of their premiums towards care. Now they're mandated to pay 85%, or 80% for individual plans.

The other thing to factor in is that most of the people that are experiencing premium increases are on plans that don't meet the "minimum level of care" as mandated by ACA. Those plans that no longer qualify are often the types of plans that lead to the horror stories of people being kicked off of plans after becoming sick (rescission), lifetime maximum amounts, etc. Insurance companies were saving a lot of money due to those brutal practices. Part of the intent of the ACA was to eradicate those practices, which ultimately protects the people that were subscribed to those plans, and who didn't understand they were at that type of risk.

In other words, if you were subscribing to a crap plan, your premiums were artificially low in the first place. It's kind of a degraded case of the people that are complaining that they can't any longer go insurance-free. The law of the land now is that everyone has to participate, in order to help take care of our sick and injured - so that means that our insurance plans all have to have a basic level of quality.

I would bet that if you restricted your search to the people that originally had plans that met that basic level of quality (which is really not all that high), you would find that their premiums have gone down.

(Obligatory data point: I'm self-employed in washington, have had a Regence BCBS plan for $540, and my monthly premium will go down about $150-$200 / month for similar care.)

But keep in mind they are using it, since the insurance reduces the risk they'll be saddled with high medical bills (or more likely that they'll saddle others with those bills). They are healthier, but can still have an accident of course.

Adding another anecdotal Washington state data point, my private individual health insurance plan (Regence Evolve HSA) with a premium of $149/month will no longer be available come January. The plan most similar to my current one is $252/month (Regence Direct Silver), which is a pretty massive increase. As a healthy, single 25-year old though, I knew some version of this was coming.

Are these two plans equivalent? What are the deductibles involved? What's your copay?

Some of this is because ACA prevents unreasonably high deductible, unless you get "catastrophic" coverage. It was quite possible that your plan was a "catastrophic" plan. You might be able to get a similar catastrophic plan via state exchanges, I know that it varies state to state.

Definitely have a catastrophic plan and the new options are essentially the same as well. Here are some more details:

Old plan: Regence Evolve HSA Plan - Premium: $149, Deductible: $3,500, Coinsurance: 20%, Out-of-pocket max: $5,000

New plan: Regence Direct Silver - Premium: $252, Deductible: $3,000, Coinsurance: 20%, Out-of-pocket max: $4,900

I would lose the HSA benefits from the new plan, which I could keep if I wanted to accept significantly worse terms (with a premium increase of only 33%!):

Regence Direct Bronze HSA - Premium: $198, Deductible: $5,000, Coinsurance: 30%, Out-of-pocket max: $6,250

I don't see how I can come out ahead on this one, once I was able to finally get quotes on the exchange, no other plan was comparable in terms of value and cost. :(

> Just want to add another data point, that here in Washington State, a comprehensive plan for my family is going to be around $600 less per month under Obamacare than what I can get right now.

I get your point and I congratulate you. However, please don't be prematurely happy, "because $600 less" is not what will fix you -- the coverage itself will.

Let's hope that when you need that coverage, you won't be treated the same way as ObamaCare website right now is. You see, before you could complain to your health plan, make a big stink out of it, even sue them, because there were private entity. When to GOV takes over, all you can is pray. Go ahead make a big stink that their system is broken, but don't be surprised to get heavily audited, for example.

My point is that I would prefer to pay even $6000 more knowing I will get the quality of coverage I pay for. I would not want to pay less to be hit with bureaucracy, abuse, lack of transparency and fairness the way government will serve me like they did with their website.

With ACA you're still getting insurance from a private company and you can still sue them if you like.