A Pro- Single Payer Doctor’s Concerns About Obamacare

Believe me, the right's approach would be much worse. But the underinsured are getting a worse deal than you think

As a single-payer advocate who is also a doctor, I was concerned after the Affordable Care Act was passed that it didn’t do enough to combat rising underinsurance. A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund, which used new data to demonstrate that in 2012 some 31.7 million Americans were underinsured (i.e. insured, but still with heavy additional out-of-pocket health care expenses), argued that the burden of underinsurance will likely lessen as the ACA fully unfolds. But is there really reason for such optimism?

This is a complicated issue with many moving parts, so one way to tackle it (before immersing ourselves in the exhilarating policy literature) is to pose a simpler question: if your family is insured, and someone gets seriously sick, can you not worry about going broke?

The short answer: it depends on how much you have in the bank, and on the “out-of-pocket maximum” established by the ACA for your particular plan. The out-of-pocket maximum is the most that you would have to pay (after premiums) on things like co-pays for medications or deductibles for hospitalizations, and it can go as high as $12,700 annually for exchange plans under the ACA. But doesn’t the law provide protection for lower-income individuals, for instance, in the form of reduced out-of-pocket limits? The answer is yes – but to a lesser extent than we initially thought, even though, somehow, no one informed us that things had changed...