The media is presenting us as morons, which is pretty offensive. I’ve seen newscasters act “startled” that we don’t know what the Affordable Care Act is about. (You can search for these annoying articles.) But we don’t know about lots of laws unless they have to do with us. So, how does it affect us?
If you have employer insurance, that’s going to be your choice. Likely more expensive or covering less (the only two ways that insurance companies save money), an employer choice will be your choice. You will also need to purchase dental insurance by choosing an option.
If your employer does not offer you an insurance plan, for ANY reason, your next determination is whether you qualify to use the health insurance exchanges, also called the health insurance marketplace.
Geography matters here since some states chose to establish their own health insurance exchanges. Find out if your state did so. If not, you’ll use the Federal health exchange.
Once you go to the right exchange, your state or the federal one, you’ll plug in your information and find out whether you are eligible for subsidies and/or rebates. These will help you pay for the premiums for your health insurance. You will need to purchase dental insurance separately in most cases, NOT on the exchange.
If you earn too little for the health exchanges, you might be eligible for Medicaid. If your state did not adopt the Federal expansion of Medicaid, and you are ineligible for Medicaid, you will have to find alternatives for obtaining your health care through community clinics, or other type situations where you can pay as you go, or if someone pays for a health insurance policy for you. You may also be able to call an agent and purchase a catastrophic policy if you have a means of laying out money for that. For dental insurance, you’ll do the same thing.
If you are ineligible for employer-sponsored, health insurance exchange, Medicaid, or you are not part of someone else’s policy (up to age 26), though someone else can pay for your policy at any point in your life, obviously, you are NOT going to be subject to the tax also known as the individual mandate.
Like before, health insurance has enrollment periods, unchanged for employer-offered insurance, and beginning in October and going through March on the exchanges.
Like before, if you have a change, you become unemployed, you get married, you have a child, you are not limited by the enrollment period, you can arrange for your insurance based on your new status. Be careful with the Federal rebates and credits that you get to help pay for insurance if your income goes up, the government could come back to you for additional money.
If you are currently not working and you get a job, then you go back to the beginning, choosing employer-sponsored insurance, or if no insurance is offered by your employer, looking into the health insurance exchanges, et cetera.
Like before, there is paperwork with getting health insurance, through your employer, through the exchanges, or through Medicaid. Next to nobody is automatically insured.
Like before, your policy will last for one year.
These are exceptionally broad outlines, but enough so that you “know” about Obamacare. Obamacare is a law designed to get people insured that uses a series of incentives and penalties to make sure people who can afford to do so have health insurance if their employers do NOT offer them insurance through their jobs.
