Friends with Benefits.

Well Shit, I'm not a fan of this topic.
Not at all, it's just a shitty topic to have to write about because so few people understand the scope of it all.

Health(care) Insurance.
So let's get to the grit of it.
Healthcare basics:

Healthcare as an employee (which is the most common way about it in the united states).

Insurance and compensation are part of the bargaining agreement between you and your employer when you start working for them.

Insurance is a weird thing, but ultimately the employer is giving you a discounted insurance plan in lieu of other financial compensation. There are some companies that will pay you to opt out of their insurance, because it's cheaper for them as long as they meet their units needed for group discount.
So when you get handed a dozen options from your HR department come fall, I'm sure you've noticed a few plans are ridiculously expensive. In some circumstances companies have executive plans which cover more than the options you were given.

Your pay-grade usually determines the allowance you get to buy a healthcare plan. It would be prudent to know that the ACA is the first real legislation to present a progressive tax system that extends to this compensation.

Why should you give two shits about all of this? Understanding benefits negotiations is as essential as negotiating your wages. Since it's such an information disparity, most potential employees do not know what they're going to get until they're hired.  It's always good to know what insurance plans are offered by a company and how they compare to other options.

It's also often the case that you may find that your doctor is no longer covered when you switch employers, even if it looks like the same plan. That's because Healthcare plans usually have a list of doctors within their program. There are some medical groups that have associated healthcare insurance to alleviate this issue, and in a sense compete over your care without your say.

The necessity of Insurance.
Health insurance since the early 80s has been a rapidly growing part of paying for a hospital bill. Insurance is and always will be an all or nothing deal. Whenever insurance becomes part of a marketplace it sets group rates and raises prices for those without insurance. This alongside Pharma patents, costs of medical equipment, and a disturbingly small pool of workers has helped to create some of the unusually high medical costs we see today.

Because healthcare insurance has become part of an employee's compensation, healthcare is more often the primary means of payment for most medical groups. The employers bargain with insurance companies for rates and plans, those insurance plans present proposals to medical groups. For the most part the conversation regarding what you pay for healthcare is never up to your needs, and the services you choose from are what the companies have agreed upon. Limiting your choices as a healthcare consumer.

Exchanges allow for consumers to pick plans they would have otherwise never seen. Their major limit is their geographic region. If you've used Covered Ca, Healthcare.gov or even a private exchange you've seen how much better many of those options can be.

Payment without insurance is always higher, and if you're savvy you might be able to negotiate a payment plan with the hospital's billing and/or finical assistance dept.

But regardless you'll pay more. This is one of the fundamental problems the ACA attempts to alleviate.  The reality that if you're employer doesn't give you benefits(usually not full-time), underemployed, or hanging income-wise out between 17k and 40k per year: you simply go without insurance, and risk falling into serious debt/health problems when something bad happens health-wise.

It also alleviates the issue of employer based competition by opening up the markets to consumers via exchanges.
In our modern society, being so close quarters and risking illness/injury daily, it is necessary.


So... I guess I should get to why I'm on this subject right now.

Well, the reason I'm talking about this is because this last week the Congressional Budget Office announced its projections for 2015. The ACA (Obamacare) has a very interesting track record.


While there are a lot of disagreements as to why these changes are occurring and how it affects us, esp. with King V Burwell presently in the Supreme Court. To insure our health as a nation, the subsidy is an important factor alongside the exchange.
What's noted here are some relevant facts: Affordable Care Act(Obamacare)  will have lower projections in terms of cost and number of people covered using the exchange.

So this is the summary full text of changes expected in 2013

And this is the real change in 2015


In order to better illustrate the exact changes, I've made some comparison charts using the data from the Congressional Budget Office:

....The full text with tables is located on HCVME.ORG...