WASHINGTON — It’s been a familiar refrain lately: While monthly premiums for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are rising sharply, as much as 29 percent in Maryland and 19 percent in Virginia, most of those insured don’t feel the pinch because they’re provided subsidies to offset the rising costs.
However, about 1.5 million Americans covered under Obamacare don’t qualify for subsidies, and are stuck with sharply higher health insurance premiums.
“To me it’s shocking, shocking, that I’ll pay over a thousand dollars a month,” said Michelle Dolge, of Northwest D.C., whose monthly health care premiums for her family of four are set to rise in the new year from $894 to $1,094 per month. Each family member has a $5,000 deductible.
Dolge and her husband, Steve, own Second Wind CrossFit Gym, in Northwest, and are among those in Obamacare who don’t get offsetting subsides.
But the Dolges’ small business doesn’t immunize them from the cares and concerns of a family budget.
“We can make our fate and our choices. We are lucky, but we are middle class,” Dolge said.
A CNN Money report defined “middle class” as having an income of more than $47,520 for a single person, $97,200 for a family of four. Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told CNN Money that such people are “getting squeezed … They aren’t getting subsidies and these deductibles are hard to afford.”
The Affordable Care Act’s promise of affordability is a broken one for the Dolge family and so is the promise of “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” To stay within their bronze-plan, the family was moved from a PPO plan, in which they could choose to go outside their provider network into an HMO, in which all providers are within the same network.
“They told me that that was my plan … I could go buy a different plan, but those were more expensive,” Dolge said.
More than 15 million Americans who didn’t have health insurance now have it under Obamacare, and the law provides other important health insurance reforms under the law, including the right to be insured regardless of pre-existing conditions.
Those who follow the law closely say whoever wins the White House in Tuesday’s election, Americans should expect some changes to Obamacare in the months ahead.
Editor’s Note: Michelle Dolge is a former news director at WTOP; Steve Dolge is a former online operations manager at WTOP.com.
