Looked it up here in CA.
If you don’t qualify for help and don’t have family you have to have $573 a month exceed 8% of your income,not 6 hundred something.
I am a family of 3 and the other two pay $350 and being older I pay through the nose like you, but there is a family penalty unless everyone in the family are very upper middle class in income.
Yes. It varies by state. My age and smoking a single cigar helped bump it up. It’s funny. I used to want the lowest price possible. But that was a different planet.