The final deadline to buy a 2017 Affordable Care Act plan is Tuesday night at midnight.
It would be easy to lose sight of why health insurance is really important after all the bad press the law has gotten. Yes, premiums have soared in many parts of the country. And deductibles and consumers' cost sharing are going nowhere but up.
It's even unclear whether the Trump Administration will enforce the penalties against people who were uninsured in the previous year when tax time comes along.
5 reasons it makes sense to buy a plan:
1. Plans stay in effect through year. Even if you're an opponent of the law, it's still the law of the land and the plans being sold have to meet it at least through this year. It's a contract between insurers and consumers — not with Congress or the White House.
2. Out of pocket maximums. There are caps on how much you'll have to pay during the year and your lifetime — not the other way around as it was before the ACA. Back then, insurers could decide how much they would pay in total for you. This greatly reduces (even if it doesn't eliminate) the chance hospital bills will bankrupt your family if you get sick.
3. Prevention not a bad word. You don't have to like former President Obama or his signature health law to appreciate fully-covered physicals, colonoscopies and birth control.
4. Essential health benefits. ACA critics, including consumers frustrated by their high premiums, often note they don't need maternity coverage at their age or any of the many other benefits required in the law. But who among us isn't feeling a tad more stressed these days? That required mental health coverage could come in real handy by the end of the year.
5. Drug prices hardly decreasing. You may not like your co-payment on that pricey drug, but imagine paying the whole price in cash. Besides, drug companies are rather generous with co-pay assistance, but only if you're insured. You may be completely out of luck if you're not.
If you're still on the fence ...
James Harrison, 57, of Summerfield, Fla., didn't buy an ACA plan for 2014 because he thought he and his wife could pay out of pocket for any health expenses above the 50% their non-ACA indemnity plan covered of some procedures. Then he needed a cardiac catheterization and his plan wouldn't cover at all. Now, he's being sued for more than $110,000 by the hospital that did the procedure.
Insurance is protection against the unknown, like "the heart attack you didn't see coming," says Adams Dudley, a physician who heads the University of California, San Francisco's Center for Healthcare Value. The "vast majority" of people can't handle a new $50,000 expense, or often one that is a fraction of that, he adds.
"Most of the people who have opioid addiction did not think they ever would," says Dudley. "Everybody will eventually have one of those things, but we don’t know which ones."
