My Obamacare Story: I Can't Keep My Plan Either

A few weeks ago, I, like hundreds of thousands others, received notice that I couldn't keep my health insurance plan.  Highmark is cancelling my plan at the end of 2014 - so at least I have a year to figure out what to do.

On top of that, the letter told me my premium will go up on December 1.  I had to call to find out that increase would be 10%.  That's after a 39% increase since 2011.

But its going to get a lot worse for me.  After weeks of trying to log onto the Obamacare exchange website, I finally did get into the site, and jumped through all the hoops allowing me to browse plans.

Turns out, the least expensive "bronze" plan that is HSA eligible (as I'd like to keep using my HSA) represents an 82% increase over what I'm paying now.  In total my premiums will have increased by a whopping 152% since 2011.

You would think that I'd get better coverage for skyrocketing premiums, but in fact, I'm going to have higher higher co-pays with the Obamacare plan.

It gets even worse.  If I participate in the exchange, I'll have to pay taxes on those insurance premiums. Turns out, Obamacare prohibits using pre-tax funds from cafeteria plans on the exchange.  Since my employer doesn't have its own insurance plan, we use a cafeteria plan, deducting funds from my paycheck ever two weeks to pay for insurance.

Now I can't do that, and my insurance premiums will be taxable income  That means I'll be paying 215% more for inferior health coverage than 2011.

Except I won't.  Obamacare is designed to hit young, healthy people like me with higher premiums. But even with the individual mandate/tax, it's a bad deal. I haven't decided yet whether to go without insurance (since I rarely visit a doctor, and Obamacare allows me to wait until I get sick to sign up and get the same price) or enroll in Samaritan Ministries - but I'm going to opt out.