The penalty was what I would have had to pay if I didn't have health insurance in 2018. The health insurance I did have had an $11,017.56 annual premium for my wife and myself with a $6,400 deductible/$7,350 max in-network out-of-pocket cost each. This was the lowest premium from the Health Insurance Marketplace available in my area. The insurance paid for annual exam office visits and corresponding blood tests. But I needed to pay copays for office visits to draw blood before the annual exams and for an upsold electrocardiogram for my wife. The insurance did not cover our vision and dental costs. I am retired and not eligible for Social Security or Medicare yet with investments/speculation as my only income. So I have no tax benefits given to business owners or independent contractors (but do get them for qualified dividends and long-term capital gains).
Did you ever calculate how much the medical care for that year would have cost you in cash? I mean the office visits were probably like 60 bux per person, yeah? What about the rest? A blood test is just 10 minutes with a phlebotomist. Lab results? Another 70 bux...If that.
The total amounts of payments made by the insurance company to providers plus deductibles and copayments I paid for my wife and myself were $634.25. This is probably a reasonable estimate for what I would have had to pay for the same care without insurance. It could be a little more (insurance companies allegedly negotiate discounts) or less (no insurance claims can result in discounts). For 2019, I didn't buy health insurance because the tax penalty is gone, and neither my wife nor I have seen any medical doctors. The insurance premium for basically the same insurance I had in 2018 (with a somewhat higher deductible and maximum out-of-pocket cost) would have been $12,235.44 for the year (only 11 percent higher -- what a bargain ). My total health care cost for 2019 has been about $30 for an over-the-counter medicine substituting for a prescription that ran out. I didn't sign up for Obamacare health insurance for 2020, but I did notice the annual premium for the same plan I used to have dropped to $11,660.88 with some rises in the deductible and maximum out-of-pocket cost. And there was another plan from the same insurance company with a lower annual premium of $11,344.44 but with an $8,000 deductible each for my wife and me. So I would summarize that the "Affordable Care Act" was neither affordable (unless you are subsidized) nor about care. The act encourages the medical and insurance industries to keep prices high because of subsidies paid to insurance companies for most of the enrollees.
You keep bringing up my account balance without knowing anything about me. It’s a typical argument on this site that’s made when you have nothing else to say.
Hopefully you won’t get diagnosed with something really serious. The problem with health insurance isn’t the daily use of a doctor. It’s that one cancer drug you might need that costs 200k/year.
Each course of Keytruda is about $100K and you need 4 to 6 courses for each treatment. Disclosure: Long MRK & options.
Actually it is a very interesting option pricing problem to consider/calculate and hedge, health insurance, that is. Buying insurance is like buying a put as portfolio insurance, in this case the company is @ph1l, Inc. Not buying insurance is like selling put.... Buying high deductible is like buying OTM. My question is what is the optimum hedge? Depends on your health, your age... In this case, you are an insider, so have insider information that the general public (insurance companies) do not have, so you should have an advantage, like insiders trading options. Have you consider running a pricing model based on having insider information to find out the odds for @ph1l, Inc - household?
tried to use the word 'trader' to generalize... your account perhaps is fine... but in general, having a wrong bias is hazardous to the accounts.