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California’s individual mandate: A fix for a broken system? Or a penalty on the poor? [centerforhealthjournalism.org]

 

When Kate Green calculated her health care costs last year, it just didn’t add up for her to stay insured.

The 30-year-old worker in a real estate referral company had signed up for the lowest-cost plan possible, but it came with high out-of-pocket costs. Premiums ate up money Green had planned on spending to pay off car and college loans. The final straw: a $1,200 doctor bill for a minor knee injury. Green dropped her coverage in late 2018, and the tax penalty for not having insurance disappeared this year for the first time since the launch of the Affordable Care Act. So far, she hasn’t regretted the gamble.

“If I have a life-threatening injury and I get taken to the hospital in an ambulance, yes, right now I’d have hundreds of thousands [in] bills,” the Sacramento resident said. “And if I was insured it might be like tens of thousands. It’s bankrupting me effectively either way.”

[For more on this story by Sophia Michelle Bollag, Michael Finch and Samantha Caiola, go to https://www.centerforhealthjou...tem-or-penalty-poor?]

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