How will the Affordable Care Act laws affect you?

[MrFun]

Me personally, I shopped online through California's health insurance exchange market and I found that with my very low income, I qualify for free health insurance called Medi-Cal. I would still be free to choose my own physician after enrolling in Medi-Cal and be covered.

Out of curiosity, I then played with Covered California's shop-and-compare calculator to give myself a hypothetical income of $30,000 a year and found that I would have qualified for premium payment assistance in choosing among the choices of tiered coverage plans presented to me on the site.

What about you and your family (if you have children and spouse)? Are you already insured, and staying with your insurance that you have? Or are you going to shop around in your own state's health insurance exchange market?

[Ben Kenobi]

It won't affect me at all.

[Aeson]

I hope to get an exemption due to not being in the US.

[Ben Kenobi]

They aren't already exempting non-resident American citizens? That's a huge loophole.

[Aeson]

There is an exemption. I'm not sure how easy it is to get or if I'll qualify yet.

[Ben Kenobi]

There is an exemption. I'm not sure how easy it is to get or if I'll qualify yet.

Good luck. The costs I'm seeing on this end are exorbitant. Someone in your situation would be paying close to 8, 9 hundred a month. You'd be better off not paying anything at all and paying your own way.

Out of curiosity, I then played with Covered California's shop-and-compare calculator to give myself a hypothetical income of $30,000 a year and found that I would have qualified for premium payment assistance in choosing among the choices of tiered coverage plans presented to me on the site.

Wow, this might be the biggest lie Fun has ever told. I'm seeing people making 18k a year with a kiddo who get no assistance at all.

[Aeson]

Reading more on it, I will qualify. 330+ days a year outside the US.

[Ben Kenobi]

Excellent.

[SlowwHand]

I'm not signing up for anything. This is like when I was in the service and swine flu shots were mandatory. I ducked it, too. Other people died.

[-Jrabbit]

Wow, this might be the biggest lie Fun has ever told. I'm seeing people making 18k a year with a kiddo who get no assistance at all.

You are the liar, Ben. Please cite where you're "seeing" this. The income cutoff for premium subsidies (which will be in the form of a tax credit, refundable and advanceable) is 400% of the poverty line. I believe that's currently about $45k.

Here's my cite: http://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files....01/7962-02.pdf

[DinoDoc]

Me personally, I shopped online through California's health insurance exchange market and I found that with my very low income, I qualify for free health insurance called Medi-Cal. I would still be free to choose my own physician after enrolling in Medi-Cal and be covered.

Out of curiosity, I then played with Covered California's shop-and-compare calculator to give myself a hypothetical income of $30,000 a year and found that I would have qualified for premium payment assistance in choosing among the choices of tiered coverage plans presented to me on the site.

What about you and your family (if you have children and spouse)? Are you already insured, and staying with your insurance that you have? Or are you going to shop around in your own state's health insurance exchange market?

When you successfully sign up be sure to alert the media. They've been searching for someone who's done it since the last success was outed by his father as a liar.

[KrazyHorse]

They'll affect me directly by causing me to pay a few thousand dollars a year more in taxes from the medicare tax hike on 250k+ earnings.

Indirectly, I will end up receiving poorer service and paying higher prices for low skilled labor and their products. This effect is mostly going to be minimal as I'm not a huge consumer of low skilled us labor.

The most important effect on me is that this will end up increasing the us national debt, which is likely to cause me to pay even more taxes in the future...

[PLATO]

My premium at work is going up. My deductible is going up. My copays are being replaced by 80/20 coverage on doctor's visits. All caused by insurance companies predicting that their expenses will be going up...no doubt. It is going to be harder to find specialist as the medical system will be flooded with new patients and no new doctors. The national debt will be going up. Time my doctor can spend with me will be going down.

Simple facts. Obamacare is bad for me personally.

[KrazyHorse]

It's pretty clear that for this to be good for the poor and unemployed (which on net it probably is, though not by any means universally) it has to be bad for other people, namely the full-time employed and the rich. This is not a free lunch; it is yet another redistribution plan.

[Lorizael]

TANSTAAFL, of course, but Obamacare could be a more efficient redistribution of resources, in which case the net gain for the poor might outweigh the net loss for the not poor. I have no idea if this is the case, however.