Bsically the insurance companies have been forced to make all policies equal - all policies now cover maternity and pediatric dental. Even if you are a single male with no children - your policy covers maternity and pediatric dental.
It doesn't matter if you go to the gov site to purchase individual coverage, or go directly to Blue Cross or Aetna - you are still getting the same four plans offered to you (bronze, silver, gold, or platinum). You may not want to call it obamacare, but it is ALL obamacare.
So - you EITHER have a group plan or you are on obamacare.
Now - your group plan often does not have a deductible. You have a low copay for office visits and it pays for tests and drugs. The non-group plans have a HUGE deductible. The Bronze plan has a $6000 deductible. It covers a few office visits per year at $45 co pay and might cover some drugs, but not all. Most expenses go to your deductible first.
In order to pay for all the pre-existing conditions and pediatric dental on the individual plans, your group plans are going to skyrocket. And I just heard a few minutes ago that some group plans, in order to contain costs, are going to begin imposing a deductible too.
Eventually group plans are going to become so expensive that they will all reach that "cadillac" level and be taxed so companies will have to drop them. We will all be on the bronze/silver/gold/platinum plans eventually.
I heard yesterday about the sky-high deductibles getting more so, but most people do not do what you or I do for a living, and so are not required to know what is in a policy-in fact, I’d venture to say they probably haven’t even read their auto policy. One size does not fit all, and never will...
It won’t get that far because they failed to be subtle. They didn’t want to try to sell higher taxes, so they instead use the insurance companies as proxies to raise revenue that they can use to “spread around.”
The people being asked to pay for all of this know, or will know, that they are paying more so that someone else can pay less (or nothing). That’s not popular.
I totally agree that people can’t conceptualize it to even know HOW bad it will be.