Skip to content

Poor little millionaires

Poor little millionaires


by digby

I have been writing with some sympathy about a certain subset of people in the private insurance market who are going to be paying higher insurance premiums under the ACA. It’s probably a small group who are living in high cost cities and who make just a little bit too much to qualify for subsidies.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about people like this:

I have no idea why a middle aged male millionaire would only buy catastrophic insurance, but I’m going to guess that he figured he could afford the out of pocket expenses of routine care. (Otherwise, he’s an idiot who didn ‘t understand what he was doing.) Either way, the additional money he will be paying for a policy is likely to be less than what he will pay if, for instance, he has an episode of kidney stones for which he needs a CAT scan in the emergency room and some medication. Non-lethal medical emergencies that don’t add up to “catastrophic” do happen to otherwise healthy people and they are expensive.

Those of us who had to buy only catastrophic insurance because we couldn’t afford a better policy would struggle to pay a 4-5,000 dollar emergency room bill, which is what something like that kidney stone episode costs. This rich celebrity will just put it on his American Express card.  He has no idea how most middle aged people think about their catastrophic plans — they pray they don’t need medical treatment.  The only peace of mind they have is knowing that if they get a diagnosis of cancer or some other exceptionally expensive diagnosis, they might be able to get through it (or die) without their families going bankrupt on top of it. Other than that, you just keep your head down and hope you make it to medicare.

I don’t think the millionaire who are getting these notices have those concerns.

.

Published inUncategorized