#CoverageMatters: Health Insurance Is No Mystery to this Rural Maine Writer

#CoverageMatters: Health Insurance Is No Mystery to this Rural Maine Writer

January 13, 2017

By: Elizabeth Hand, Lincolnville, Maine

I resented every check I used to send my private insurer. My plan cost $466 a month for me and my two children, and I basically didn’t get anything for it. From 2001, when I first signed on, until 2014, I spent more than $70,000 in monthly premiums, doctor visits, medications and other associated costs not covered by insurance.  But as a self-employed crime writer in rural Maine, I didn’t have much choice.
Until, that is, I was able to check out my options on the Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Marketplace. A young man at the Marketplace’s call center helped me find a plan, which after tax credits would cost only $51 a month for my son and me (by then my daughter was on her own plan).
I cried.
My family history made me hyper-aware that I should get a colonoscopy, but I could never afford one on my own. But because of the Affordable Care Act, and my new Marketplace insurance, I could get a colonoscopy as a preventive service at no additional cost.
And thank goodness for that. My doctor found a pre-cancerous polyp that could have become life threatening if it wasn’t removed immediately.
READ MORE: #CoverageMatters: Health Insurance Is No Mystery to this Rural Maine Writer