Chelsea and Maya are here to relieve some of the fear and confusion surrounding Obamacare.
Hey guys it’s chelsea from the financial diet and today i’m here with someone very special and that’s maya our own editorial assistant at the financial diet and we’re going to be talking about something very cool and interesting at least in my opinion and that is obamacare so unless you’ve been living in some kind of cave which no judgment chances are you’ve probably
Heard about obamacare often in kind of a negative scary way but it’s actually a pretty interesting and complex and nuanced thing that’s different for everyone but has for many millions of people provided health care where they didn’t have any before and as someone who myself has been uninsured at different points in my life when i was working for myself i certainly
Wish there had been maybe something like this around when i was flailing about as you know a wayward young person so we’re gonna talk a little bit about what obamacare really is and how you get it and the things you might not know about it with someone who actually has it so kind of just starting with the basics like what is open enrollment and how do you do it
So it’s very simple actually but it’s not as well advertised i feel like especially in the millennial generation it’s sort of like easy to miss if you’re not looking for it but open enrollment runs from november 1st to january 31st of 2016 and basically it’s a time where you can go online to healthcare.gov and sign up for a plan without having any specific reason
Whereas if you were to do it at any other point during the year you would have to say like hi i have a life-changing circumstance i lost my job i lost my insurance something like that so it’s just basically a time when everyone’s allowed to get insurance exactly but it’s important to remember that if your spouse or partner has insurance through their company then
It can be a little bit harder and there’s a few more rules that come along with that gotcha i actually have insurance through my domestic partner who i became domestic partners with specifically to get insurance once i went freelance and i’ll include a link to that article in the description to kind of explain how that works so can you kind of tell us like in you
Know generally how much you’re gonna pay in 2016 for your insurance and what that gets you like what plan you have it’s a bronze ppo i do blue shield because that’s what my providers are under and i’m gonna be hanging about 215 a month but that doesn’t include dental or vision so it can get up to almost 250 like i’d say i’ll pay just under that and that’s for a
Bronze plan which there’s silver gold and platinum above it but you are still getting quite a bit you have three doctor’s visits where you don’t have to pay a copay at all and then it will be fairly good coverage in terms of like i can get birth control without having to pay etc and so with that plan you have a deductible or copay or yes you do have a deductible and
A copay but the deductible is going to be fairly more reasonable than if you were to do say a catastrophic plan and a catastrophic plan is if you are basically saying up front i want to play less monthly but then you end up if for example you break your leg you end up paying quite a bit in your deductible if you were to go to like the hall at all for a catastrophic
Plan it’s actually only available to those thirty and under the only people i know on it are freelance writers and editors who’ve decided to pay less monthly assuming that they have good health and won’t have to go to the hospital or the doctors very often so i think a general rule is like you really have to look at what you do medicine wise every year and be honest
With yourself yes and i personally the catastrophic plan that i was looking at was coming in at about 190 which is $20 less a month and some people can get it for even less than that but personally for me i would be too anxious making matches right and plus like you know i mean it also discourages you from going to the doctor frequently which is bad in general and
Also could lead to worse things down the road like you shouldn’t be like okay i’ll never see you know my gynecologist because too rich for my blood so it’s just a hope everything’s ok right so approximately what percentage of your income now is going to go to obamacare right so i just calculated and it’s actually going to be around 7% a lot it is a lot and the to
Sort of give you a faint frame of reference for that when i was working a full-time salary job i was making an entry-level salary and i was paying about $40 a month for good benefits vision and dental that’s about 1 percent of my salary that i was paying it was actually like 1.5 but you can see the increase there and when i did look at other obamacare plans for
People in different tax brackets than myself people can be paying up to 9 percent of their income which is a lot and it’s true that like we have come a long way like when people were graduating in 2008-2009 they were like 22 couldn’t go back on their parent’s insurance it was extremely stressful and now there’s actually a penalty if you don’t have health insurance
At all you pay it per every month that you don’t have health insurance so as you mentioned you’re the kind of the cost out of pocket for you every month with obamacare it’s actually a lot more than it was with your employer quite a bit more and it’s sort of going to be that way for everybody that transitions from that full time salary benefits lifestyle to a freelance
Life is there a difference between obamacare and private insurance yes there is and that was something that was so confusing to me so the thing is it’s not necessarily more expensive because there is sort of a ruling that you can’t offer this exact plan private and charge more money for it gotcha it’s just that there are more options with private insurance so if
You have highly specified medical needs then a lot of people tend toward private insurance just because they can get you know their doctor covered their dermatologist covered their gyno their therapist whatever it is and it’s hard to find sort of an all-encompassing plan on public insurance or at least it has been when i’ve been looking for one gotcha so if you’re
The kind of person who you know is maybe getting a lot of special to things whether that’s you know dermatologist visits or orthodontist visits or things like that you probably will have a hard getting that covered under obamacare i would say it’s fairly likely that it will drive up your price pretty quickly and so some people prefer to just go get a full package
With private insurance and call it a day so if someone has the time they can go to an office near them and we’ll include a link about how to find the representative near you so that you can get an in-person consultation because at least speaking personally when i think about things like obamacare the scariest part is like what do you what website do we even go to
Like how do you navigate it is there like a bunch of like really weird contracts that you have to read like that kind of thing so if you do you know have those concerns and you’d like to go have a representative explain it to you like a five-year-old which is how i would like it explained to me if possible definitely check that out and again we’ll include the links
So obviously we have the different types of plans you know the bronze silver gold even platinum and in the catastrophic one but then you also have to acronyms that i don’t understand at all but i hear a lot which are hmo and ppo just quickly can you tell us like what those are and why you chose the one you chose yes so i specifically am choosing a ppo and that’s
Mainly because the benefits that i used to have through my company were ppo and it involves using a provider network involves your primary care physician referring you to other doctors that will be covered within your ppo so the doctors that i have used and that i’ve been referred to are all within for me a blue shield ppo and that’s the one i chose and then the
Other one that i considered was an hmo and that’s health maintenance organization so it’s basically a small sect of providers and it’s specific to your location and those would be your go-to zet cetera gotcha so if you have the doctors you have your primary care physician and you have the doctors that you know and want to stay with it may be best for you to get
A ppo yes in my experience and i’ve also noticed that a lot of people that are using their like companies insurance have ppo is that’s the most common one offered and that’s why i’d say people stick with it well we’ll include a link in the description to help you figure out if you should be going for an hmo or a ppo depending on your specific circle stances is
Their cost assistance for obamacare because i know for a lot of people probably the primary concern is i just can’t afford it so there is and it comes if you are an individual and you have no dependents you might qualify for a cost assistance plan if you make under forty six thousand dollars a year okay and then for a family of four if you make under ninety five
Thousand dollars a year but it’s not guaranteed so for example i could qualify and actually don’t it wasn’t explained to me why i don’t i’ve read articles that say i should however there’s a chance that at the end of the tax year they could go back and say actually my oh we’re gonna give you a cost assistance and then i would just get it on my tax refund so you
Just get reimbursed for the money that you paid it too much so just kind of to give people a better idea because obviously you’re coming at this from california with your specific income and all of your specific constraints do we have like an example of like if someone else were to do this i got we’re in new york maybe someone in new york yes okay so there’s a
Fairly good health care calculator that you can go on and we can include that link as well and you can plug in this is how much i’m earn or projected to earn in 2016 this is where i live this is how many dependents i have what am i going to be paying and i plugged in if you’re making thirty five thousand dollars a year and you’re living in queens you can get a
Silver plan for two hundred and seventy nine dollars however that plan comes after a 90 dollar taxes system if you are making thirty five k in queens you would going off this calculator be getting that assistance but even after that assistance was applied you’d be in the 270’s range that’s for silver so you could probably bring that down a little below 250 if
You’re going for a bronze plan gotcha so to recap pretty quickly on what we’ve kind of learned here today there are several things to consider if you’re thinking about obamacare or terrified of obamacare or want to learn more biggest one obviously is to find out how much it would be for you and you can either do that by using the calculator that will provide for
You online or seeking out a in your area who can really kind of explain things to you in a way you can understand tailored to your individual circumstance also you’re gonna want to check and see which plan works for you sort of which level of coverage depending on the kind of coverage you have how many times you go to the doctor each here the different kinds of
Doctors you go to it’s cetera you’re also gonna want to check if an hmo or a ppo is smarter for you and why and make sure to look at your monthly budget and see if that is the kind of cost that you can take into account because obviously maya in her circumstance didn’t have things like student loans but when we’re talking up to maybe three hundred dollars a month
That’s definitely something that you’ll need to plug into your budget and see how it affects your overall month-to-month so hopefully obamacare feels a little bit less scary to you now i know it certainly feels a little bit less scary to me and thank you so much for kind of sharing your experience with that you’re right thank you that was awesome and as always
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Transcribed from video
What You Should Know About Obamacare | The Financial Diet By The Financial Diet