Get Covered!

This is the last day of ACA open enrollment, so if you still don’t have health insurance, now is the time. It’s still a messy system, and it would be far better to have automatic universal coverage, but relying on GoFundMe as a backup plan is not a practical or ethical alternative (and if you do end up on GoFundMe, much like the Covid unvaccinated who end up on ventilators, please include a PSA telling others not to make the same mistake).

In earlier years I didn’t have the patience to get through the California and Nevada exchanges so I continued to shop for insurance on ehealthinsurance.com, which was convenient and often cheaper than buying directly on the insurer sites, but pre-Obamacare there was less assurance of getting a policy (Blue Cross Anthem denied me due to high cholesterol as a preexisting condition and invited me to apply for a “high risk” policy), and with Obamacare I was still missing out on the income-based subsidies available when you insure through the exchanges.

But the system has been improving, and I finally got through the Nevada exchange just as the subsidies expanded to cover a wider income range, so my monthly payment has gone from around five hundred dollars a month to nothing. I could probably get a better policy now (my opthamologist gave me a discounted rate on my last visit because my deductible is so high), but I don’t want to mess with it - now that I’m in the system, everything is automatically renewed for each new year, I pay no premiums, and even though my deductible is high, I’m not paying the ridiculous list prices for uninsured medical services. Get covered. It’s in your best interest, and it’s in everyone’s interest.