Obamacare Health Plans: Did We Know About The High Deductibles When We Signed Up?

With most people signing up for healthcare with high deductibles of $2,500 or more, most are experiencing unexpected “Sticker Shock” due to high out-of-pockets costs reports Bloomberg last week.

Alarming predictions that the premiums for individual health plans would skyrocket in the first year of Obamacare turned out to be largely unfounded. But the roughly 8 million people who bought insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges may suffer some sticker shock as they begin using their benefits.

That’s because many of the plans make consumers shoulder a lot of the costs of their medical care through deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance—payments the newly insured may not have grasped when they signed up.

Deductibles—the amount you pay out of pocket before the insurance starts paying—are a good example. In some plans, the cost of visits to a primary care doctor are covered with just a co-pay, while others require patients to pay for all or part of those office visits until the payments reach their deductible. Some plans have separate deductibles for prescription drugs and medical care, while others combine them. (All plans are required by law to cover preventive care, such as an annual checkup, at no charge to patients.)

The median deductible for silver-level Obamacare plans—the type most people on the exchanges bought—was $2,500, but the deductibles for an individual ranged from as little as zero to as high as $6,250. That’s close to the maximum out-of-pocket cost Obamacare plans can charge.

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Obamacare Health Plans: Did We Know About The High Deductibles When We Signed Up?