While most Americans know that the ACA law includes fines for those who do not buy coverage, Kaiser found that just 39% of the uninsured were aware of the Monday deadline. About four-in-ten (43%) said they didn’t know the deadline (or refused to answer), 13% believed it was sometime after March and 5% were under the impression it had already passed.If you’re uninsured in the U.S., Monday is the deadline. Go ahead and do it now while the web site isn’t overwhelmed. I did this (and have guided friends through it), and it’s usually really easy. (In my experience, it can be quite hard if there’s a problem with ID verification, but that’s rare.)
We signed up for insurance in half an hour, paid a week later when the bill showed up, and were insured. I know that’s not everyone’s story, but I do think it’s most people’s stories. I was really intimidated by the web site and the whole process, but it does work, and the subsidies make insurance affordable for most people who aren’t medicaid-eligible.
#there’s no reason to get fined for not having health care #mine is 100% free!! #yours probably will be too #because i know most of my followers are broke as heck #you don’t need any special stuff #or at least i didn’t!! #just basic info and your id
reblogging with Lynzie’s tags because I don’t know any deets, but signal boosting!
Online is the fastest way but their website is having problems with the amount of traffic. I had to go to the office to make sure my crap went through because it errored on the very last page (lolugh) Phone takes FOREVERRRRR and its probably too late to mail out your application in time. I’d go into an office if I were you! Which will also take forever!!! GOODLUCK.
The worst part of this law (without getting into the politics of it) is that for a lot of people it’s actually a lot cheaper to pay the fine than to get unusable health insurance.
I’m a self-employed artist, so employer coverage is not available to me. I just checked the rates on that website and the cheapest plan available to me is around $190 a month (if I qualify), making it $2,280 a year. Which isn’t too bad, except that the deductible is $6,000. I rarely spend more than $500 a year on doctor visits, if even that, so unless I got into a horrific accident I would never get any coverage from this plan. Edit: And horrific accidents are usually covered by car/house or other insurance.
In contrast, the fine is $95 or 1% of your annual income, and if your annual income is so low that you would have trouble affording $2,280 a year, 1% is still a lot less to pay.
On top of that, having health insurance would remove the small discounts I DO get on doctor visits for using self pay, even if that insurance does not cover any part of the bill.
You could argue that the whole point of health insurance is specifically for covering the horrific accidents you don’t expect, but it’s hard to stomach $2.2k a year with not only zero benefits, but negative benefits.
I believe I’m opting out for now.
(Source: pewresearch, via zambiunicorn)