“...raised the cost...but taxpayer subsidies were supposed compensate for that...”
My wife and I have our own business. Just the two of us. No employees. No dependents. We are in excellent health and were paying $360/Mo. for comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, preventive, etc.) prior to Obamacare. As of January 2013 our premiums jumped to $670/Mo. And on Monday, 12/1/14 we were informed that our monthly premium will now be $922/Mo. Screw Barry and every other Demonrat. Barry and his minions are taxing us out of existence.
Welcome to FR.
Pay attention to this post. It is no joke. This is what is happening to small business.
Those of you that don’t own your own business can armchair quarterback this and say “that sucks.”
But consider that we talk about issues all the time that mostly stay in the realm of politics or affect tax increases that we all somehow just absorb. Or things that only affect a tiny portion of the population that somehow figure out how to get by anyway.
The kind of jump described by the OP’s article and by the poster I’m replying to... you don’t just ABSORB that.
You potentially (read: most likely) drop your insurance or shop hard for something less expensive per month with deductibles so high you could never use it anyway.
It’s one thing to make that decision personally. It’s ENTIRELY another to make it when you are married and ENTIRELY another yet to make it for your children who can’t even fully comprehend that they are going to go without medical coverage for anything except the most catastrophic of situations. And that may still break the family’s finances before getting the deductibles paid.
Maybe, there isn’t going to be any medical coverage at all. Because the govt now mandates the bronze plans as being the lowest you can get. Which have hopelessly high deductibles and still cost a fortune per month when you have to buy them on the open market as a small business owner.
Think real hard on how many millions of actual small business owners, working citizens of the USA in the prime of their lives with families, are in the exact same boat.
This is a defining moment in our history. It’s bankrupting the backbone of our economy. Small business is always the largest input to any economy... no matter how big the big businesses get.
The reason people don’t talk openly about it more, is because it’s personal and private. The government knows that. All small business owners are facing this like a gun to the head.
This poster, as others I have seen, didn’t mention if they are going to pay the new rate or go without insurance. It isn’t our business to pry. Maybe they can afford the monumental increase and maybe they can not.
The important thing is to ask this question of yourself and your family: If YOUR insurance went from $360 to $920 per month tomorrow, could you afford to keep it?
Could you sacrifice enough other things to keep it?
What would those sacrifices have to be?
How much more can your finances withstand before you go broke? How much buffer is left in your income if any?
Hint: Most people don’t even dream of having $560 in savings or disposable income every month. You don’t just find that kind of money under a mattress or just “work harder” to make it appear. There are practical limits and we are passing them right now in this country. Right this minute. The consequences aren’t going to be “somewhere in the future.” For small business the damage is being done right this second.
Your situation mirrors ours almost exactly — self-employed, both in our 40’s, healthy and fit, no dependents, and the insurance costs were nearly identical. Since you’re both healthy, you should do what we did and buck the system (if you can).
We were fortunate to find a concierge doctor in our town, which was completely unexpected, and we also joined the Liberty healthshare program. The doctor is $125 a month for a couple, with unlimited visits, etc. We chose the top Liberty program for $299 a month per couple, which is 100% coverage up to $1M per incident. I don’t ever foresee either one of us using $1M in TOTAL healthcare in our lives, much less per incident.
Going this route only increased our monthly healthcare costs from (about) $385 to $424, instead of almost $900.