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Comment by clamprecht | Hacker News Reader

You're not alone. In Texas, they cancelled almost all (or maybe all) individual PPO plans (affecting about 367k people), leaving us to choose HMO or EPO plans (the lesser of two evils). And about a 20% increase (per year) in insurance cost for the last 3 years. I at least hope some folks are benefiting from the ACA, I'm certainly not.

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> In Texas, they cancelled almost all (or maybe all) individual PPO plans (affecting about 367k people), leaving us to choose HMO or EPO plans (the lesser of two evils).

I know Scott and White[1] is still offering PPOs, but apparently they only service 77 counties in Texas. A quick check of healthcare.gov tells me that none of the big insurers are offering PPOs, though. I don't know if there are other small-ism nonprofits like SWHP serving other parts of the state and providing PPOs.

[1] https://swhp.org/en-us/

In CA, that's not the case. Our insurance went up maybe $50/person, but we got mental health care, acupuncture, and various other benefits we didn't have before. Oh and we have pre-existing conditions that would prevent us from being insured if we didn't have employer-based. And this is all PPO.

You have coverage, but having care is a little different. For each of those features, do you have local providers who are willing to take on new patients and provide that care at the offered reimbursement rates? In much of CA, the answer is no.

For me in SF, it hasn't been an issue. We are PPO blue shield which everyone takes.

SF proper has Healthy SF public coverage as well.

Here's an example of the concept just today:

Fecteau’s story illustrates a common complaint by health-care advocates here: Dental insurance doesn’t mean access to care. Part of the problem: Washington has one of the nation’s lowest reimbursement rates for dental care provided through Medicaid..."

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/wash...

What'd you have before the ACA?

I had an individual PPO plan. Also, my current plan isn't an ACA "marketplace" plan, it's a non-marketplace HMO plan.

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