It's taken a long time but I finally got through on the insurance exchange...
I gave up getting my identity verified and just had an new application submitted over the phone.
I qualify for a 110 dollar a month credit. Which means that insurance plans range from 34 dollars to 200 dollars. I haven't been able to inspect the plans yet but even at the most expensive, I am paying hundreds of dollars less a month.
To put this into perspective, since I'm totally uninsured, I pay about 400 dollars a month to see one doctor and receive 4 prescriptions. If my doctor didn't give me free samples for one of my meds, I would be paying 1100 dollars a month.
I've lost thousands of dollars over the past 14 months. That's money I'll never get back that I really seriously needed along the way. I haven't been able to see a doctor for a physical. I haven't been able to follow up with an orthopedist for a broken wrist I received from a motorcycle accident 4 months ago. I haven't had a new prescription for my glasses in years. I've been waiting it all out until I had insurance again.
I still believe the exchange system had some really bad faults upon it's rollout and I will not recant my complaints that I made a couple months ago about not being able to get through. But the system seems to be fixed now and for that I am eternally grateful.
I want to thank all of the people responsible for passing the health care law and implementing it effectively. This includes the President, Congress and all of the workers who operate the exchange.
I also want to take a moment to tell several groups to kiss my ass. Those include Blue Cross/Blue Shield, AETNA and Golden Rule insurance for denying me coverage last year when I needed it the most because of a preexisting condition. At a financially and emotionally vulnerable point in my life, these businesses told me to fuck off and die. I wish nothing but the worst for them. I hope that we will eventually have socialized medicine and that they will become obsolete and wither into nonexistence.
