The insurance companies report to our state board about what drives y/y premium increases in our market. This (the quote) is one of them (the 20% driving 80% of costs, if I may loosely invoke Pareto). Maybe I'm flying loose characterizing them as such, but if you're sucking up $1m-2m annually(!!) in subsidized health care services, I'm assuming you have some serious concerns preventing you from living up to your full employment potential (and God bless 'em, by the way).
On the individual market, you're in a very high-risk pool, and the only people substantially contributing (e.g. zero subsidies) are in the minority and, IME, increasingly disenfranchised, either leaving the system or going back to working for the man. BTW, my state did expand medicaid and that system has plenty of its own issues. How they intersect, I neither know nor care at this point.
>>"realize you're not always going to be healthy"
Do you honestly think people don't realize that? I mean really? Do you honestly think I wouldn't prefer to have an out-of-pocket maximum that comes with insurance? I mean, stop assuming people are idiots and look at the problem: the premiums on the individual market are often too expensive for new business owners if they're in this doldrum-zone of being too profitable for subsidies but not large enough to build a new lower-cost risk pool out of their own employees or wealthy enough to afford a premium that costs as much as a house with no asset to show for it (when, btw, their consumption of services is less than $1k/year). This is just the reality, and a major contributing factor to why many who think about trying to start a business simply don't. It's _literally_ prohibitively expensive.
Being a veteran of going two years unsubsidized on the individual market in one of the highest-cost states probably means I've done more to help distribute costs than most (i.e. "you"). That the system is unsustainable (and predictably so, btw) is not my guilt to bear. That some aren't familiar with the nature of the burden and simply think people make bad decisions doesn't bode well for a fix anytime soon. The day there's an affordable plan, I'll sign up again, rest assured. In the meantime, enjoy your employer-sponsored plan, my friend. You have less to worry about than I do while I fly solo.
On the individual market, you're in a very high-risk pool, and the only people substantially contributing (e.g. zero subsidies) are in the minority and, IME, increasingly disenfranchised, either leaving the system or going back to working for the man. BTW, my state did expand medicaid and that system has plenty of its own issues. How they intersect, I neither know nor care at this point.
>>"realize you're not always going to be healthy"
Do you honestly think people don't realize that? I mean really? Do you honestly think I wouldn't prefer to have an out-of-pocket maximum that comes with insurance? I mean, stop assuming people are idiots and look at the problem: the premiums on the individual market are often too expensive for new business owners if they're in this doldrum-zone of being too profitable for subsidies but not large enough to build a new lower-cost risk pool out of their own employees or wealthy enough to afford a premium that costs as much as a house with no asset to show for it (when, btw, their consumption of services is less than $1k/year). This is just the reality, and a major contributing factor to why many who think about trying to start a business simply don't. It's _literally_ prohibitively expensive.
Being a veteran of going two years unsubsidized on the individual market in one of the highest-cost states probably means I've done more to help distribute costs than most (i.e. "you"). That the system is unsustainable (and predictably so, btw) is not my guilt to bear. That some aren't familiar with the nature of the burden and simply think people make bad decisions doesn't bode well for a fix anytime soon. The day there's an affordable plan, I'll sign up again, rest assured. In the meantime, enjoy your employer-sponsored plan, my friend. You have less to worry about than I do while I fly solo.