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Comment by spacehome | Hacker News Reader

> They cannot afford to lose healthcare coverage.

And with Obamacare, they don't have to. They should be able to purchase decent coverage on the exchange, right? That's what we did when I quit my job.

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The amazing coverage they have is barely cutting it. He pays pennies on the dollar for the coverage they get. I can't imagine it would be like this at all on the exchange.

Good news: you're almost certainly wrong :)

Obamacare in MN is through https://www.mnsure.org/ . Your father being fired or laid off qualifies as a special enrollment event.

If your mother is seriously ill, look at gold plans and simply look at the maximum out of pocket. Find a plan with a maximum out of pocket of $2k or even $1k pp. They'll spend it all, and after that, your out of pocket expenses will be limited to copays. They will even be eligible for assistance paying for it if your parents' income falls.

From a brief poke around the above website, for zip 55401 and two adults born 1/1/1960, you should be able to find a plan for under $1k/mo unsubsidized with a $3k/family/year maximum out of pocket. This is almost certainly less than cobra will cost. Be careful of narrow networks though, particularly if your mother is being actively treated by a doctor/hospital.

Good luck to you and yours.

At $1,000/month that's over 10% of his pre-tax income at his current job. That's a lot of money if you aren't working and your income goes to zero.

Yes, but if that happens, thanks to the other half of Obamacare (the Medicaid expansion), if income goes to zero / povertylevel for any adult (no longer merely special classes of disabled or child-raising adult), then healthcare becomes free.

People with big enough health problems that the heavily subsidized Silver market category is insufficient, but who have only a middle class income, do get stung in this system; But before Obamacare they would have been treated much, much worse should their employer fail to provide them with good health insurance. The Silver market plans are supposed to represent the standard level of care, and be subsidized on a sliding scale from 99% right above the Medicaid threshold, down to 0% at ~$100k income or so, IIRC.

Note also that this is reliant on not being in a state where a Republican governor has decided to turn down federal money for Medicaid expansion because Obama is a Communist Muslim Death Panelist.

MN, thankfully, has chosen to implement Medicaid expansion.

Well, you have two options:

1 - If you have enough income, you will still be eligible for obamacare through the national but not state obamacare organization: healthcare.gov . The coverage gap is between medicaid on the low end if you have a family (no coverage if you're a single adult) and 100% fpl where obamacare kicks in.

2 - if you have too little income, and you should go on Medicaid expansion but unfortunately live in a state run by bigoted morons, you can always lie and claim your income is higher than it is. It turns out nobody will go after you for this. You just have to claim enough income to get yourself out of the medicaid income bracket and into the obamacare income bracket. You'll still end up with health insurance that costs (guessing) on the order of $50 to $100/mo after maximal tax credits.

In most states, that is $11,770 for a single adult. Your circumstances may be complicated, though; ask someone local. There are people who will help you with this.

and oh yeah: pull your head out of your ass and vote for Democrats. And make sure all your friends and family know that they're not just voting against communist muslim death panels, they're actively hurting you as well.

From what I can tell it doesn't do this until you've been unemployed long enough to file a return with zero income.

No, you can call obamacare (not the insurer), explain the loss of income, and ask for the credit. You'll get it, obviously with penalties if you lied.

Do they not count the most recent income? What if you get laid off (or even quit) and suddenly have no income, but for the last year you were making a lot?

The tax credits are calculated on your annual income. So if your income suddenly falls, you have two options:

1 - if you have the savings, just pay the bill and you'll get even with Uncle Sam when you do taxes next year

2 - call obamacare and ask for immediate credits. The credits are based on your annual income, so for example if you got laid off in June you'll get one set of credits for that year, since you had an income for half of it, and larger credits the next year, assuming you still need obamacare and don't have a job.

If you have someone in the family with serious medical issues, though, it's free money. A trip to the ER and a few days in the hospital runs tens of thousands.

If his employment does end, he can do COBRA for 18 months (although he'll lose the employer contribution of course).

Afterwards, ACA guarantees that a plan will be available. Depending on the state, you may be able to even get a quick quote online to get an idea of what the cost would be today.

You don't need to go on COBRA and exhaust its benefits before signing up with the ACA. IMHO, the only reason you would want to sign up for COBRA is if you or a family member are undergoing care at a hospital and you don't want the continuity of that care interrupted.

The ACA is going to be far less expensive than COBRA . If you are on COBRA and the company declares bankruptcy, you lose COBRA and must sign up for the ACA.

COBRA is not a realistic option for most people. Without the employer contribution, most health plans end up costing more than $1k/mo. That's too much for a steadily-employed person to afford, let alone someone who was just laid off.

You don't have to imagine anything. Get a quote from their 24 hour telephone hotline.

https://www.healthcare.gov/contact-us/

Years ago I did a website for a person who sold health insurance for businesses. It turns out that a business is defined as 2 people and can come in most any form. With business healthcare they accept anyone even if you have pre-existing conditions. It gets around trying to buy health insurance directly. Cost is pretty reasonable.

There are no pre-existing condition exclusions in private insurance through obamacare. That was the biggest change it brought and is the reason for the mandate (so you don't wait to get sick and then take advantage of the lack of exclusions).

Great advice - also, there are a few states that allow a one person business to qualify for group coverage.

I forget all of them, but I think the following states still allow "groups of one" with respect to a business acquiring health insurance:

Connecticut, Delaware, Mississippi, North Carolina

My apologies if I'm wrong on any of these, it's just off the top of my head since the last time I looked into it.

A two person business won't be able to negotiate a group rate or decent benefits package very well. At this point you're better off looking at these ACA exchanges. They've done the negotiation for you with these larger carriers.

You're right - private health insurance will be far more expensive than what he's paying now.

I don't think there's any way around that.

If he can afford to pay the vig, then COBRA makes the most sense for the short term.

cobra is often much more expensive than obamacare; at least it was for me

I think with the mother you would want at least a gold level plan, right? That's pretty expensive.

With what money?

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