Americans still are worried about whether they can afford their medical bills.
May 21, 2015 Millions of Americans have enrolled in private health coverage through the Affordable Care Act in its first two years, but a lot of them still are worried about big medical bills.
Nearly 4 in 10 Americans who enrolled in an ACA-compliant individual health insurance plan in 2015—both on and off of Obamacare's marketplaces—said they still felt vulnerable to high medical costs, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Marketplace enrollees were generally positive about their insurance–74 percent rated their plan excellent or good—but cost remains a concern for a significant minority of them. For example: 36 percent said they were dissatisfied with their annual deductible. And 56 percent of people with Obamacare-compliant plans said they were very or somewhat worried about their ability to pay the health care services they need.
A big problem: Plans that tend to have the lowest monthly premiums also have the highest deductibles. Almost 90 percent of 2015 Obamacare enrollees signed up for either a bronze-level or silver-level plan, the cheapest coverage but which can have deductibles of thousands of dollars. That means people can still be on the hook for a good chunk of change if they actually rack up medical bills.
About 40 percent of those in the overall individual market were enrolled in high-deductible plans—which Kaiser defined as above $1,500 for an individual or $3,000 for a family—versus 43 percent in low-deductible plans. (The rest weren't sure). Just 35 percent of those in the high-deductible plans were happy with their deductible; 79 percent of low-deductible enrollees were.
