ACA Plan until medicare?

[elnrgby]

Originally Posted by stagman

Hi

My wife and I hope to retire soon. We will need health insurance until Medicare. Getting some confusing feedback on what level (bronze,silver,gold) to get. What are thoughts? thanks

Prior to my retirement at the age of 60, I was self-employed for about 20 years, so I during those two decades I bought my own health insurance, which I continue in retirement, for a little over one more year (I'll be on Medicare in 2025). My state (MA) introduced the first ACA plan in the nation, if I remember correctly in 2005 or 2006, on which all later ACA was modeled. Before that, I had just an incredibly cheap catastrophic insurance offered by my professional society, then switched to MA ACA because it was mandatory in the state of MA (which really annoyed me, because my previous catastrophic insurance had been something like only $250 per year, although it did have a $24k deductible). I am healthy, so I always had the cheapest available ACA bronze plan. It has a high deductible, which is fine because I never use it, and would have no major problem paying the deductible. If you do have chronic illness, or would have trouble paying the high deductible that bronze plans have, then get a plan with more coverage.

Note that you can deduct some of your ACA premium from the IRS tax if your taxable income is below certain level (I thought you'd get that deduction if your income is between 138% and 400% federal poverty level, but someone here said the upper cutoff was still above 400% fpl, wherever they raised it during Covid).

[teeej]

Originally Posted by elnrgby

Note that you can deduct some of your ACA premium from the IRS tax if your taxable income is below certain level (I thought you'd get that deduction if your income is between 138% and 400% federal poverty level, but someone here said the upper cutoff was still above 400% fpl, wherever they raised it during Covid).

It's a tax credit, not a deduction. If one is self employed, they can deduct their health insurance for the amount of premium that's left after the premium tax credit.

[Serious Conversation]

My parents had to do this for about a year and a half as my mom was already retired, and my dad quit his full-time job on the spot. I think they were both 63 when this happened. They're 66 now and got on Medicare last year at 65.

They were on a silver plan for $700/month. The coverage is fair at best - it did not cover all the things his corporate plan did, or as well.

[SDbp]

I think your options vary a lot from state to state. I "retired" when the pandemic came along and my company eliminated my job. Rode COBRA for 18 months. Was not cheap but was good coverage. But since I live in a low population state, there's not much interest from a lot of insurers so I almost had to do ACA after COBRA. Downside on ACA coverage is/was the only options were the 2 regional medical systems. I chose the one where I had most of my doctors. I've been on a silver plan as there were and still are good subsidies. I adjusted my income up this year by about 1/3, but I was surprised I'm still only paying about 165 a month. The main sticking point to my relatively inexpensive coverage is that I can't use any doctors outside the hospital network, or it's 100% out of pocket unless it's an ER visit.