Being a Patient

November 20, 2013 in From the Director, Homepage by Joyce Sheppard

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At the height of the Great Recession in 2009, nearly three-fifths (57%) of adults who were unemployed and looking for work were uninsured. Things have not gotten appreciably better for the jobless since then.

UCubed estimates that 12 of the 21.6 million real unemployed Americans are also uninsured. And insuring the uninsured was – and remains – the primary goal of Affordable Care Act.

In spite of the website launch failures, UCubed urges the unemployed to go to www.healthcare.gov. Give it a try. If it doesn’t work at first, try, try again. And then keep trying some more.

Living without health insurance can shorten your life. It can lead to massive medical debts if you or a family member does get sick. It can increase your taxes once the individual mandate kicks in in 2014.

The Affordable Care Act offers unemployed and underemployed Americans what they so badly need: subsidized health insurance.

According to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, the premium subsidies of the Affordable Care Act are “offered on a sliding scale basis and will limit the cost of the premium.” The actual premium depends on the federal poverty line and family size.

The Labor Center at UC Berkley has a nifty tool to find out what your premium would be: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/healthpolicy/calculator/

A single person with an income up to the federal poverty line ($15,282 in 2013) would be eligible for Medicaid. A single person with an income up to $17,235 would pay a premium of $690 per year. A family of three with income up to $39,000 would pay a premium of $2,461 per year.

So what are you waiting for? Go check out www.healthcare.gov.

Being patient with a clunky website is far better than being a patient without any health insurance.

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