Picking Health Insurance Is a Nightmare

Health care workers stand outside Fountain Valley Regional Hospital in California, Aug. 6, 2020 [Reuters/Mike Blake]

Contact lenses are expensive. To save money during the pandemic, I made two-week lenses last for three. The prescriptions on both my contacts and glasses are old, and sometimes my eyes were dry or irritated, but I held onto the hope of getting eye insurance in 2021.

Today is the last day of the open enrollment period for marketplace insurance under the Affordable Care Act in 2021. This was the second year I needed to buy marketplace insurance after getting laid off from a full-time job in October 2019. So along with nearly 20 million people, I logged onto HealthCare.gov to begin making the calculations required by our system of private health insurance.

Choosing a plan is a notorious nightmare with all sorts of restrictions that disqualify people from the care they want, and create puzzling gaps in coverage. Maybe you’ve realized that you don’t qualify for financial assistance like about 43% of 15.9 million people eligible for marketplace insurance this year, but don’t make enough to afford a plan that would see you through a major health crisis without financial ruin.

Last night, as I scrolled through the open enrollment marketplace, I was dismayed to find out that most of the insurance plans available to me didn’t have optical insurance. None of the plans that covered my longtime therapist covered optical, either. I was already frustrated enough — my current plan was rising by $40 monthly, to $360. I could have selected another plan that was cheaper, but the high deductible and bad coverage deterred me. It was either pay now or suffer later. Ultimately, I prioritized mental health over optical.

It’s absurd how much easier this could all be if we didn’t have to rely on our employers for adequate insurance. I’m not so confident that things will improve under a Biden presidency. In the meantime, I’ll continue looking for other ways to get around a broken system.