I was under the impression this would increase the cost of insurance for younger people in order to allow insurance to better cover older people and those with pre-existing conditions....
You seem to be under the impression that all potential entrepreners are young, without dependents, and without pre-existing medical conditions. Not true.
That's the argument. The premiums you pay when you're healthy are beside the point.
I've also heard many self-employed people now face a significant increase in their healthcare costs due to the fact that many high-deductible catastrophic insurance plans are illegal under ACA and plans that cover everything from contraceptives to mental health problems cost a lot more. At least I've seen many reports from self-employed people that they got notes from their insurance companies that their plan is cancelled under ACA and is no longer available.
What's happening is that some existing catastrophic plans don't meet the requirements of the ACA with regards to coverage, cost-sharing, annual spending caps, and other metrics. Some of these plans are closing rather than conform to the law. But there is no blanket provision against high-deductible plans.
There are some suspiciously similar stories floating around the conserv-o-sphere involving vaguely specified elderly couples who are just spitting mad about having to give up their cheap, crappy, high-deductible plan because of the ACA. These stories smell very much like astro-turf propaganda, and should be treated with high levels of skepticism.
Of course, the mere fact that plan is high-deductible does not make it illegal. However, as far as I know, under ACA it is illegal to offer plans that restrict coverage of certain options. Which makes specific plans that were restricting them (and thus making the plans cheaper) illegal, and they are getting cancelled because of this.
>>> There are some suspiciously similar stories floating around the conserv-o-sphere involving vaguely specified elderly couples
I've personally seen multiple scans of officially looking letters saying things in the vein of "our insurance company discontinues this plan because of ACA". Are you saying all of these scans are fake and produced by astro-turf propaganda? To choose most "propagandy" one, just to get it out of the way, here's an example: http://michellemalkinblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/screen... This is from Michelle Malkin, google who it is if you don't know, it is a very real (though not that elderly) person. Is it true or fake?
Regardless, high-deductible plans are legal under the ACA.
The net effect is that exchange-listed plans -- because of the two forms of subsidy -- have lower per member acquisition costs than traditional individual plans, meaning that for any given premium level, they can provide more profit and/or more coverage. These plans can expect to lose lots of their existing customers to exchange plans in the short-term, and its not really worth the effort to replace them -- so, for the insurer, it makes sense (especially since if they are also offering exchange listed plans) to just cancel the no-longer-viable non-exchange individual plans rather than continue to bear the fixed overhead of operating them when their sales prospects aren't good.
[1] - http://www.nami.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Find_Support/NAMI...
It'd be better I think to separate the systems into basic health care, and catastrophic insurance.
>>> You should also cover things that are preventative so that people don't end up needing catastrophic coverage.
Some people will end up needing catastrophic coverage, that's what it is for. But what you are saying people should not have a choice between buying only catastrophic coverage and managing other issues according to their current financial needs and abilities - possibly, yes, taking some limited risk on themselves - and buying comprehensive, but more expensive full-care all-included package. That would make it more expensive for those who were willing to take the risk, since this risk would be taken now by insurance company, and they will want to get paid for it, risk-shifting is never free.
>>> Paying for someone to see a therapist and take an anti-depressant is cheaper than paying for inpatient treatment if things spiral out of control.
Paying for car maintenance is cheaper than buying a new one. Yet nobody says car insurance should pay for routine car maintenance - those are different things, and people manage to take care of their cars just fine without car insurance paying for it. You're again confusing healthcare and health insurance and seem to be under impression that the only way to administer healthcare is under the umbrella of all-encompassing "insurance" policy. My point is exactly that it is not true, and that ACA moving in this direction makes it more expensive, especially for people that otherwise would like to take a bit more risk than average person in order to allow them to profit later. Those exactly people are entrepreneurs, so the claim that ACA makes them better off sounds a bit doubtful for me.
Not spending money on gas doesn't make things that existing mandatory car insurance does cover (liability) more likely or more expensive. In fact, it makes them less likely. Not spending money on mental health and contraception, OTOH, does make things that catastrophic medical insurance would cover more likely.
Financial incentives to defer costs is one of the reasons why the US healthcare system is by far the most expensive, not just in total but on a per capita or per GDP basis, in the world, despite it nor producing better results that other developed-world systems and, unlike every other OECD country except Mexico, not providing universal coverage.
But of course, not knowing your specific situation (and not being a lawyer) I don't know what happened, but it seems like whoever denied your coverage may have violated the law.
I've been self employed since getting off my parents insurance, have always had health insurance and never had trouble getting a policy.
There are legions of stories of insurance from reputable companies (BCBS, etc) that fail to deliver value when they're needed. Theoretically, ACA holds the issuers to standards that guarantee service.
In combination with all of the above, this ends up being more expensive. There are other causes as well.