At those low wage levels you’d either get free Medicaid (up to 4x poverty line depending on your State) or heavily subsidized marketplace plan.
The fact it's easier to afford if you make more money is...well, sort of the reason why people want it to be universal, and covered by taxes, so the rich can offset it for the poor.
At least with Obamacare, you (likely) won’t go bankrupt if you break a leg.
You also get preventative care fully covered (or ~$30 copay) even with plans that have $6,000 deductibles.
That includes both low & high cost items, like annual physicals and colonoscopies.
No, Obamacare shouldn’t die (as you said in an earlier comment) but it should be replaced with something that improves on what it’s already done.
Personally, I favor Medicare for all.
My anecdata for people on ACA is that it works pretty well, with a caveat that premiums are high due to various misaligned incentives in the US health care system.
- bartender friend of mine got laid off due to covid. With unemployment at ~$3k a month, he paid about $200 a month for insurance that had very low deductibles and overall seemed to be a good plan (silver). It was better than the plan I had as a university professor at a “good” university.
- another friend of mine started her own business. Very low income the first year (maybe $20k?) and was living on savings. She ended up paying about $100 a month for similar insurance to the bartender friend above.
The “downside” of these plans is that they scale aggressively with income. For reference, the entrepreneur friend’s business took off in year two, and now she’s paying about $1100 a month. This sounds high, but that’s what her group plan cost at her previous employer when you factored in the company contributions.