Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47420306

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975107

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562167

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Asked and answered in the piece dude - I wish I had the confidence of a Hacker News commenter who didn't read the article.

Moreover, what are you even trying to accomplish by asking for this? Please provide me with a forthright defense of the modern U.S. health insurance markets and why it makes sense for me to have to pay this much to keep our population above replacement level.

Looking through some plans now, but TBH these are genuinely not much of an improvement in the cost department and a massive downgrade in the provider selection department. Hence my whole section on trade-offs.

Edit: what do I have to gain from spreading "misinformation?" I just want better / more options?

that link doesn't even say what you says it does - it said you can apply for coverage, not that there are plans that cover child birth. Have you never done this before?

You know they charge you, separately, for both the mother's care AND the infant's during a delivery right? Those count as two people. I am, with 100% certainty, going to hit the out of pocket max - I have every time.

Like I've paid for three kids all on the same plan, including one born in January so my deductible got spread over two different billing years.

I have to ask - why are you defending this?

2. If we weren't trying to have kids, our options for purchasing health insurance expand drastically. Individual marketplace plans become a viable, for instance, since the "not covering childbirth" issue goes away. I mention the short-comings of the individual health insurance marketplace at least twice in this regard, including a big pull quote explaining the ACA work-around with child birth coverage.

I am absolutely not eligible. I earn more than $150k. And "manipulating your income" is not really feasible with a pass-through entity.

> The premiums have nothing to do with the plans. Every single plan on the marketplace has to cover child-birth, that's sort of the point of the ACA.

As I mention in the piece, I check every year. I have no idea what subsidized plans include, but the other marketplace plans definitely do not include child birth.

I explicitly address this point:

> The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) barred insurers from turning down applicants based on existing pre-conditions; the way insurers get around this for pregnancy and child-birth is not by rejecting pregnant applicants (illegal), but by simply refusing to cover the care those applicants need to survive pregnancy (legal and common.)

and

> My wife and I are healthy, but we’re building our family and I have yet to see a marketplace plan that supports child-birth. Maybe the subsidized ones do, but I earn too much money to see those. All of the ones I’ve found through eHealth Insurance or Healthcare.gov never cover it - and I check every year.

Love the over-confidence though. The best outcome for me in even writing this article would be to get some internet commenter pissed off enough to find me a cheaper version of my plan. That would solve my problem immediately!

You're moving the goal posts here. You have to have service, realistically, in order to use it like a real person.