The fact that it has better copays and deductibles than the cheapest plan under the ACA is not saying much, since they are the absolute minimum coverage you can get under the ACA. Whether you use the term "catastrophic" to describe it or not is really beside the point. The fact remains that you currently have very minimal coverage, and that the primary benefit that coverage provides for you is protection from financial ruin and/or the inability to the get the health care you need if something very bad happens.
Anyway, the "catastrophic" issue aside, my point still stands. You will be getting a substantial benefit under the new system that your current policy does not provide. That benefit costs money. And the cost for that benefit will naturally tend to impact the cheapest policies the most. One effect of the ACA is to pull up the bottom end of the distribution in terms of health coverage, so naturally this is also going to pull up the bottom end of the distribution in terms of policy costs. That is one of the reasons for having a subsidization policy in place for low income people.
What I'm trying to get at here is that regardless of the difference in copays and deductibles, you are getting an extremely valuable benefit under the new system that was not available at all before. You need to at least factor that in when considering whether you are getting value for that money or not. And regardless, you may want to consider the fact that people who currently pay a lot more for health insurance than you do (which is almost everybody who has it) are not likely to have much sympathy for somebody complaining that their rates are going to go up to an amount that is still less than what they have to pay.
This may not be entirely true, Stimpson.
For example: In one of my states, our most popular plan prior to ACA had a $3500 deductible, $10 copays for office visits, and a flat $100 copay for ER visits. It ran about $95 for a 40 year old.
The least expensive bronze plan we offer has a $5000 deductible, $25 copay for OV, and ER is subject to deductible and coinsurance. It runs about $180 for a 40 year old.
At first glance, it looks like the bronze plan has higher deductible, higher copays, and also costs nearly twice as much!
The difference is that the prior plan had no maternity, no drug coverage, and no out of pocket maximum; it also had limits on the number of visits that were covered for physical therapy, mental health counseling, and chiropractic, and a total dollar limit on what we'd pay if you were hospitalized. It was designed to be a very lean plan that gave generous looking coverage to people who were healthy and had no real medical needs. If people were sick, they didn't get much out of that plan, since it didn't cover (or it severely limited) services that sicker people were more likely to need.
On an apples-to-apples basis, the bronze plan is considerably more generous than the prior plan was. But if you don't need, or don't care about those particular services, it's not really a great move.
Without knowing details, I can't say whether this is the case with Newton's plan; I can however, say that your assessment of it as being an extremely valuable increase in benefits isn't well-founded. It might be true in aggregate terms, but that doesn't mean that Newton's going to find it to be a meaningful increase. If he isn't planning to become pregnant
p) and doesn't use drugs, and doesn't anticipate needing a lot of physical therapy and hospitalization, then to him, it's added cost with higher costshares, and no increased benefit
to him.
