I just re-upped for Obamacare, and I’ll quickly mention that it is shitty insurance that costs $1,300 a month for my wife and me. Even though we’ve used healthcare services in the past 3 or so years that we’ve been on Obamacare, we haven’t seen a single penny from the insurance company because our massive deductible has never been satisfied. It’s medical bankruptcy insurance that I’m lucky enough to be able to afford. My personal situation tempers any talk of how people ought to be grateful for Obamacare, especially considering the almost $50K I’ve spent on healthcare plus insurance over the past 3 years.
That all said, Medicaid plus Obamacare is a huge working class benefit in red states, because it actually pays out to a lot of people who work for a living but don’t have employer-sponsored plans. I have some Trump-voting relatives who are on Medicaid or premium support or “buying off the exchange” or whatever else they call it. Some of them run small ag businesses where they pay little or no tax because they’re plowing every spare cent back into the business. (They are not tax cheats — anyone who’s run a small business that makes big capital investments can work it so they don’t really pay much.)
Though they’re probably on the same exact insurance as what Fox and Friends would characterize as “welfare” for undeserving brown poors, they wouldn’t acknowledge that they’re on anything like”welfare”. They work and pay taxes (well a little bit) and, in their minds, they deserve their “insurance”. I’m sure they have not even an inkling that Trump wants to take away what they consider an entitlement in the most basic sense of the word.
This will be a great opportunity for the opposition party to point out that (a) they only have their insurance because we worked our asses off for them to get it, (b) the guys they vote for have wanted to take it away, repeatedly and (c) the reason is tax breaks for rich dipshits.
Pet Calendar Update
trollhattan
I’ll brook no more nonsense about squishy Democrats. Lock and load, my dudes.
Old Man Shadow
I have total faith that when their health care goes away specifically because Republicans pass a law doing it and the Republican president signs it, that they will find a way to rationalize that it’s the fault of Democrats.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@trollhattan: That’s my Rochester-area Congressman (Morelle). I don’t know that staffer, though.
Chief Oshkosh
@Old Man Shadow: Of course they will. Which is why the long term solution is to eat the rich.
trollhattan
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Hoping there are some juicy stories forthcoming!
Old School
Wow – that’s a lot.
Probably a question for one post down, but I wonder how many areas have premiums that high.
Just ran an estimate for coverage for my wife and I and the cheapest was $200/month (after tax credit).
Ronno2018
How old are you Mr mix? I work full time at age 61 and my employer insurance cost is the same. I pay $300 towards the cost and another $300 for my 24yo daughter.
Old School
@trollhattan:
Here’s the staffer’s story:
Betty Cracker
I’m in the same boat with a shitty high-deductible health plan. It paid off this year big time. Also, I was fortunate that when I got sick, it was early in the year, so I quickly exhausted a deductible large enough to purchase a good used car. The insurer was on the hook for all my subsequent covered expenses. Not looking forward to that deductible renewing at the end of this month, but I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it. It’s ridiculous that this is a thing, but Republicans will make it so much worse.
FelonyGovt
I hear you about insurance under Obamacare. As self-employed small business owners, we used it in our pre-Medicare 60’s when we pretty much couldn’t get anything else we could conceivably afford (insurance companies really rake you in your 60’s, their last chance before you get Medicare). We were grateful to have it but it never paid for very much, if anything.
rikyrah
Medicaid has the wrong poster children.
The poster children are Black and Brown women who have too many children (according to THEM)
The people who take the largest chunk of Medicaid funds are Bob and Sally’s Meemaw and Paw Paw.
mistermix,
they completely ignore your family members, because they don’t want to admit who the recipients of Medicaid Expansion are.
trollhattan
This heartfelt morale boost is part of the instruction sheet for a printer head-cleaning kit, my hail Mary to rescue the Epson from e-waste status.
Not written by a German, either.
Tony G
Nationwide, Medicaid pays for about 70% of nursing home expenses. When (not if) Elon Musk and his DOGE commandos decide to get rid of Medicaid, a lot of Trump voters will discover that it’s not only “those dark-skinned people” who will be kicked to the curb — it will be their Mom and Dad also. Maybe they won’t give a damn about their own parents.
@mistermix.bsky.social
I am 61 and my wife is 60, for those who are asking, and we’re both quite healthy, knock on wood.
Aziz, light!
The dog has caught the car, so how likely is Obamacare soon to be replaced by a concept of a plan?
Mike S
Covered California kept us out of bankruptcy in 2019 when my wife shattered her ankle. Her first 2 surgeries were over 100k. I think we were responsible for around 15-20k.
Oscar wasn’t great but they got us through until I became eligible for insurance at my radio station in 2020.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: With all the stuff happening in Syria I was trying to get a handle on its size. So I compared its area and population to various US states and guess what? Florida comes closest!
Syria covers 71,000 square miles and has a population of 21 to 25 million depending on how you count all the refugees. Florida has an area of 65,000 square miles and a population of 22.5 million.
Some fun facts for a quiet afternoon.
justawriter
Have you considered being poor? You too can have all these wonderful benefits.
That’s enough sarcasm. Sorry you and your family have had to interact with the health system so often over the last few years. Sincere wishes for better days in the New Year.
FDRLincoln
After 30 years as a freelancer and contractor, meaning for much of my life I had lousy insurance or no insurance at all, I stumbled into a local county government job in 2022. It has good benefits and health insurance.
I’m 56. My wife is 55 and has MS. Without the county health insurance, we would be totally sunk.
I am holding onto this job for the rest of my life. I don’t plan to retire.
Martin
Federal Medicaid is one of the barriers to CA getting to single payer. Right now we’ve cobbled together a patchwork that includes ACA and Medicaid (MediCal branded in the state) and are supplementing those with state dollars. The state has aligned things to the degree that the same application for ACA will now also apply you to Medicaid. This year the state got rid of the asset requirements which eliminated the supplemental application needed for Medicaid.
Right now we get our insurance off the exchange, and per the Covered California website we’re approved for ACA for next year and the county is reviewing our eligibility for Medicaid because we are near the income limit. We don’t want to be on Medicaid so I have to call and tell them that. The state does this so that if you fall off of one system they’ll automatically pick you up on the other. It’s good in that it’s hard to fall through entirely, but they don’t map cleanly onto each other because the benefits aren’t the same and the providers aren’t the same. The state has done a lot of work to try and line them up reasonably well.
But this is also a system that the state spends about $4B of state tax dollars on – roughly the entire state budget of a medium sized state. And that is intended to cover everyone that the ACA and Medicaid don’t – included undocumented Californians, which we have millions of, and things that Medicaid doesn’t pay for like abortion services and some mental health services. These efforts have improved health outcomes across the state. It has helped people keep working. It’s also the single greatest contributor (by a wide margin) to our budgetary challenges, particularly as we send more than $40B in federal taxes to DC that never come back because they subsidize other states. This would be fine if we were having a good faith national debate over spending and taxation, but I haven’t seen that in ages, and we elect a guy that is open in his desire to punish blue states and reward red ones and that’s simply untenable. That breaks the covenant completely which is why I want the feds disarmed on that front – discontinue Medicaid so my tax dollars can’t be weaponized against me.
I don’t like that idea, I think it’s bad for the country, but I think it’s less bad than Trump weaponizing the federal budget for his personal needs. And I don’t know how to politically navigate the latter crisis, but I think a lot of red state residents suddenly losing their health care might result in a productive political activity. I don’t like that people would be hurt by that, but people are hurt either way. I don’t know how to avoid that.
Tony G
@Tony G: By the way — as one of the millions of people for whom Medicaid paid for a parent’s nursing home expenses, it was noteworthy how miserly Medicaid is in it’s assets limits. We had to make sure that my mother’s assets were under the princely sum of $2000 in order to keep getting Medicaid coverage. It’s Communism and must be eliminated!
Miss Bianca
@Tony G: I can’t say I’m looking forward to the scenario of my younger Trump-voting brother – who suffered a massive stroke earlier this year, and who had no fucking health insurance because OF COURSE NOT, so he is currently in a nursing home on Medicaid’s dime – being dumped on my older Trump-voting brother’s doorstep because SURPRISE, this is what you voted for!
And when I say I’m not looking forward to it, it’s mostly because I know how many millions more who didn’t vote for it are going to be suffering at the same time. NOT because I don’t think my brothers deserve to get what *they* voted for good and hard.
trollhattan
@justawriter:
My Iowa granny had Social Security, a house free and clear, and cats. Plus a few bucks rattling around in her checking account. She did qualify for Medicaid because her net worth other than the house and the dead Caprice sedan was pocket lint. That safety net was knitted from spider silk and bailing wire. It was an education, especially when it was time to move her out into senior care. Somehow we made it all work but jeez.
ETA she never talked politics, I don’t know if she voted, but if I were to bet granny was probably a Roosevelt Democrat. But her district? Steve King.
Chetan Murthy
@Old School: haha. I’ve been paying $1.7k/mo this past year, I’m sure next year it’ll be even more. Back before the pandemic it was $1.5k/mo, IIRC. And like Mistermix, I’ve never reached my deductible. Like him, I view it as medical bankruptcy insurance. But also, the price we pay to live in a decent society: I’m well aware that I’m subsidizing poorer Californians, and that’s perfectly alright with me.
If I lived in …. Texass (or some other Godforsaken red state where the crackers effectively voted to end the ACA) I’d be a little more bitter about it though.
JustRuss
@trollhattan: Harsh, but honest.
Martin
@Old School: We’re $130/mo for 3 people. But we’re pretty much at maximum subsidy (though we don’t deserve to be) due to how income is treated. We’re living off savings until it makes sense to turn our pensions on. Most of the ‘income’ we take to pay bills is just our own money, so it’s not taxed, so it doesn’t count. So it’s a bit of a struggle for us to report enough income to stay above the medicaid/ACA line because it’s a lot of fussy financial stuff rather than just taking the easy road of pulling money from investments that didn’t work out which would show us near zero income.
We’re in this loophole that shouldn’t exist, but I’m not sure it’s worth closing. I don’t think there are many people in our situation and testing for it would require a LOT of low income people to jump through a lot of hoops. If we had any kind of wealth tax in this country – even one that didn’t apply to our wealth level, that’d make it easy to close up at least somewhat.
In our first year on the exchange we didn’t have much subsidy (if any) and were paying $1100 for 4 people for the equivalent plan that I had when I was working, and I was pretty happy with that. If I had taken my pension immediately, I would have qualified to keep that plan through my employer for $700/mo (my employers contribution), but I would have lost a lot more than $400/mo off of the pension income by doing so.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I have a question for those who’ve gone thru the signing up for Obamacare:
Do you get spammed? Two friends here in CO looked into “getting onto the exchange” and the first thing that struck them was that it was all basically outsourced, 3rd party in-betweens who then bombarded them with phone calls and emails. It wasn’t as if they could simply “shop online”, pick a plan and then start tossing dumb-amounts-of-money-for-what-you-get at the provider.
Their takeaway was that it was so painful and in some ways dishonest (their words), they simply are going without until Medicare hits. And hoping a) something catastrophic doesn’t happen to them in the meantime, and b) Felonious D and the vandals in the House and Senate don’t kill it.
Sure Lurkalot
Bankruptcy due to medical costs is practically unheard of in other industrialized countries so good job, America! We are A Number One exceptional in that regard already but we can always make more Americans sick and sicker, poor and poorer.
Martin
Man, it’s wild just how much variation there is on the exchange. We’re paying $130/mo for 3 with Kaiser. That’d be $950/mo without subsidies, so that’s the range. My wife had cancer earlier this year, surgery and all that was $500 copay total, plus $10/mo for the prescriptions. We’ve never paid more than $500 for a procedure. Even when my son needed a fairly routine out-patient procedure but his needle phobia meant we had to try a bunch of different ways to get it done, including 3 trips to a surgical center to do it under general, only one of which he was able to go through with, even all of that didn’t cost us more than $500.
WereBear
@trollhattan: The sick puppy mill advocate. And a real ding on the Amish, who are deep in it.
Kay
An acquaintance told me today she is worried about losing her job as a special needs teacher in a public school. I know she’s a Trump supporter and therefore I just refuse to engage on this with her.
Parents of disabled kids got together in the mid 1960s and worked their asses off to pass two pieces of legislation that completely changed the lives of disabled students in 1973 – IDEA and sec 504. Then people like my acquaintance got mildly annoyed at inflation and people talking about pronouns and just threw that work away. I hope she gets fired when Trump cuts funding. There has to be pain or we’ll be stuck in this horrific pre fascist/fascist phase forever. Voters take everything for granted. They need to lose.
gene108
I’ve been on the ACA for 5 or 6 years. When I’ve been laid off, I’ve gotten good subsidies, which have reduced my premiums to zero a month.
I buy a silver plan for NJ. My deductible, without subsidies, is around $2500 a year. That’s not very high and easily be reached in under six months, especially if the cost of prescription drugs goes to the deductible.
The most annoying thing about ACA plans is they keep raising the annual out of pocket maximum, which goes up to $9k or $10k.
Old School
@Martin:
Yeah, that’s what made me look. Mrs. School used to help her older relatives get their plans renewed every year and most qualified for zero premium plans. (That was probably five years ago as most are on Medicare now.)
I wondered if prices had really increased that much.
I guess we’re lucky to live in areas with more competition.
Kay
My acquaintance is 5 years younger than I am, which means she was a child when all those civil rights activists worked for a decade to get funding for disabled students, WHICH means she has benefited her whole life from work she didn’t do and was too stupid and selfish to hold onto and pass to younger people.
Baud
@Kay:
Agree. We’re not their sponge.
ETA: Universal response to such people.
“I have faith that Trump will not let anything bad happen to you. Don’t you?”
Steve LaBonne
@Miss Bianca: I am not quite mean enough look forward to the wailing and gnashing of teeth when a bunch of MAGAs Find Out. But I know it has to happen if the country is ever going to have a chance to get out of its death spiral.
JustRuss
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yes, you do get spammed. My phone was lit up for about a week. I answered a few of the calls, and they were actually quite polite. Turns out a friend of mine works for an agency that specializes in ACA, I worked with her to get enrolled.
gene108
I am uninisurable without Obamacare. If it ended, I have no fucking clue how I’d get health insurance.
I’ve paid around $620/month for a single silver plan in NJ, without subsidies. I’m happy to do this. I’ve had health problems and holding down a steady job to get employer insurance feels like a pipe dream to me right now.
I think my choice without the ACA is sell everything, move in with my mom, and hopefully be poor enough to get on Medicaid.
There’s a lot of variance from state to state how the same program is administered and what it pays. The ACA like unemployment insurance probably has significant variations from state to state.
scribbler
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I had an ACA policy for a few years before Medicare kicked in last year, and that was not my experience at all. You can do all of your searching for plans and comparing to others at healthcare.gov, talk to an ACA navigator if any questions remain, and sign up on the website. Never had to talk to any third party vendors and never had any followups except from healthcare.gov.
FelonyGovt
@trollhattan:
RUDE!!!
Miss Bianca
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: are there really *no* independent insurance brokers they can talk to? I found one pretty easily and now all I have to do is talk to here once or twice a year and she gets everything set up for me with Connect for Health Colorado. I have an Anthem plan that I am happy with and the premium is going to cost me a grand total of $1 per month this year.
Barbara
@scribbler: If you just do an Internet search for ACA plans, the first results will likely be for third party vendors (basically, agents or brokers) and if you call them, they will call you back, perhaps relentlessly. My advice is to make sure you go to the official .gov site, either the FFE or the state exchange if the state of your residence maintains one — I think we are up to around 16 states that do (e.g., Connecticut or Idaho).
If you are receiving subsidies it is really important that you make sure you are on top of the enrollment process. There has been fraud in this arena, CMS dropped the ball last year in overseeing some of these vendors, although it is now trying to clean things up.
ETA: Some people really don’t seem to realize how degraded Google search results have become and just assume that the highest result will be some kind of “official” website. Hasn’t been that way in a long long time.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Miss Bianca:
Thanks to you (and everybody else) for the replies.
I honestly have no idea just how in-depth these two friends decided to go. They’re both cheaper-than-cheap and neither is in any financial hole.
Its why I asked, was this something specific to how CO set up and runs the exchange or just them being typically peculiar (and lazy)?
JaySinWA
@trollhattan:
“You are, or are about to become an ink stained wretch, and that’s on you”
Miss Bianca
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I think my advice for your friends would be to check out some of these third party brokers. They won’t have to pay for it – the brokers get paid either by the state or the feds, I forget which. If you want, ask WaterGirl for my email and I can forward you the name of the person I use.
AM in NC
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Healthcare.gov directs you through the sign-up and renewal process. Never got any spam from outside groups after signing up in 2022 or in 2023.
Now my husband is getting daily reminders from Aetna/CVS (our current coverage) to re-up for Obamacare coverage before the deadline, but no spam from other companies.
Birdie
Once again, only Democrats have agency, and if they say the spell just right, it will work for sure!
Barbara
@Kay: You are being very kind not to ask what she thought would happen.
VFX Lurker
As Martin mentioned upthread, ACA exchange experiences may vary.
I live in Los Angeles County. In December 2014, I left an employer that had Blue Cross/Shield coverage in Texas. I ended up getting unsubsidized Kaiser Permanente Bronze coverage for myself and my husband, which cost 2/3rds of what COBRA coverage on my former employer’s plan would have cost.
Although we had Bronze coverage, Kaiser only charged us co-pays and hardly ever charged us for anything else. My husband had an urgent care trip in 2016 that cost us a $75 co-pay. He saw multiple doctors and nurses, including an ENT, and…Kaiser never mentioned it again. Plus, all the routine care that ACA deemed essential (birth control, mammograms, colonoscopies, annual check-ups, vaccinations) had no out-of-pocket costs. Thousands of dollars’ worth of essential care, all covered.
Before the ACA, I had three rejections from three separate insurers for private coverage. In 2010, I formed a general partnership with my husband so that we could legally purchase guaranteed-issue group coverage for ourselves. If either of us had died, however, the other would have lost coverage.
The ACA removed so much nonsense from my life.
I would also like to mention that the only ACA-related emails I get are the occasional health reminder from Kaiser (my former insurer and provider) and from Blue Shield and UCLA Health (my current insurer and provider). I haven’t been spammed in any way here in California.
Bill Arnold
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
NY State experience:
No spam. Process is:
– Get a NY State id/login for online services, if one doesn’t have one. (Did that several years ago; don’t remember the process other than it was easy. Also used for DMV.)
– Emails from NY State start in Nov, reminding that its enrollment season.
– Go to the link in the emails (or https://nystateofhealth.ny.gov/individual).
– Browse available plans. (If renewing an existing plan, it’s much easier). Talk with friends, maybe, or just select one.
– Pay an initial month before December 31.
The cost and deductible for a gold plan are basically what I payed for COBRA after being laid off by a large corp with typical corporate health insurance plans. Deductible is painful; prescription drugs are paid for.
Bobby Thomson
I was all ready to blast someone for denying that Medicaid is an entitlement because they don’t know what an entitlement is, but you do know. Well done.
SpaceUnit
@Miss Bianca:
This was my experience as well. When I first reached out to access the state exchange I was put in touch with a third party broker who was extremely helpful. Like you I speak to her once or twice a year and she handles all the paperwork. I have a silver plan with Kaiser and pay about $100 per month in premiums.
Lobo
@Kay:
Kos had a good question to ask: Is this what you voted for? Then leave it at that.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Heh.
:-/
We had to do a “super deep clean” or whatever Canon calls it, basically the most wasteful head cleaning process, to get a printer at home working again after it sat for a year or so without being used. Emptied about 1/4 of the contents of each ink tank, but it worked.
Good luck!
Best wishes,
Scott.
catclub
@Geminid:
Ireland definitely punches above its weight.
It is about the same population and economic powerhouse as Mississippi.
The Lodger
@JaySinWA: Das Machine ist nicht fur Gerfingerpoken und Mittengraben usw.
catclub
I think there is a guy named Dave Anderson who will tell us all that the ACA subsidy rates drop off a cliff above a certain income. In order for the whole system to look better on ten year budget plans.
stinger
@Tony G:
Same here. And then after she died, our governor (since Medicaid money is distributed by the states) sent a lovely condolence letter asking for the tens of thousands of dollars back.
“You wouldn’t have authorized her Medicaid eligibility in the first place if she’d ever had that kind of money, you idiots,” stinger did not reply.
Ohio Mom
@Tony G: My soon-to-be-former Senator, Sherrod Brown, worked hard on getting the Medicaid asset limit raised to $10,000 but could not make any headway. I’m betting there isn’t anyone else to take up this cause.
@Tony G: My hope is that the nursing home industry sics its lobbyists on those in the Trump administration thinking of cutting Medicaid. I know the national disability organizations will but I don’t have much faith in how much weight they have to throw around.
Pete Downunder
When I last lived in the US before the ACA I was paying about $850/mo for crappy coverage. I now pay about AUD $5000/year with $500 annual excess. That’s about USD $3300. I had major heart surgery in a private hospital with superb docs. Total out of pocket $364. There are many advantages to living in Australia and that is one of them.
Ohio Mom
@stinger: In some cases, deceased Medicaid recipients do have assets that can be paid back to the state. Ohio Son’s estate will include a trust and a special needs bank account that Ohio will clean out.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I have never been privileged enough to NOT KNOW WHERE MY PAYCHECK COMES FROM.
The absolute insanity of someone working in Special Education NOT KNOWING that their PAYCHECK comes from those Federal Programs….
Gloria DryGarden
When Obamacare came on, I was able to have Medicaid, which has been a big help. Before that, I signed up each year with a local discount program at the city’s health and hospitals, showed my income. Both those systems helped me a lot when I needed them.
When I came of age, I had Medicaid plus Medicare, but that got messed up, soon after, because of dead parents and a small inheritance. It has been a brangle to try to fix things in the midst of multiple flus, Covid, many big home repairs, best friends moving away, and a few other things. People who have taken their retirement ssi get their Medicare B premium taken out of their ssi.
Having low income plus this small asset, and not enough ssi unless I wait til I’m older, it’s complicated.
I’m so grateful that Obamacare got me Medicaid, and I have friends who’ve been happy with their health insurance exchange and subsidy experience here in Colorado.
BUT, my friends and clients with steady middle class incomes tell a different story, like many of you, an enormous monthly premium, equal to a second mortgage payment. Around $1600/ month. One friend had to get a second job. That doesn’t seem ok. It’s a big burden.
one of my clients voted republican to get rid of the requirement to have to have every coverage under ACA.
ITS been explained that congress was trying to set up the healthcare to be more fair to middle class folks, but republicans wouldn’t pass it until they could throw a wrench into the works. I didn’t study it, but I was aware that the ACÁ made things better for some and way worse for others.
it’ll suck for a lot of people when this new admin starts undoing things.
btw, i hate when they call safety net stuff for poorer people, entitlements.
Entitlement is congress paid to sit around and get nearly nothing done. Or corporations and rich people getting astonishing subsidies and tax loopholes.
Ohio Mom
@gene108: I hope it never comes down to you selling everything and moving in with mom, but if that does look like a possibility, please consult with an elder care attorney first. They know all the Medicaid rules and will help you avoid screwing yourself and inadvertently making yourself ineligible. There are a lot of arcane rules to Medicaid.
Martin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: In CA we did not. When we first signed up we had some trouble because we didn’t want to fill out the whole Medicaid asset section (back when CA required it) and just wanted to be considered for ACA, and there wasn’t an obvious way to do that so we called one of the people who are contracted with the state to help this process and they pushed some buttons and got our application in without that part. I chatted with them a bit while we were waiting for things to process and they talked a bunch about that contract. The state pays them to be available to help with this. They can’t promote other services they might be associated with, they can’t cold call, etc. That may be a California restriction, but spam at least isn’t a national problem – so check how things are just in your state.
Martin
@VFX Lurker: I will note, I think a LOT of that good experience you and I have is on Kaiser, and not on the exchange. By and large they are a joy to deal with.
asdf
$1300 per month, given the rule that this should not be more than 8.5% of your income suggests your household income is well into the top 15% of households. I’m just saying.
Fake Irishman
@Old School:
Yeah. I ran some numbers on that and if Mr. mix is paying that much a month including subsidies, either he is falling into a weird crack in the system or his family income is definitely in the upper end of the spectrum.
There is nothing wrong with that, but it’s pretty rich to call Obamacare worthless based on that.
plenty of working class folks get insurance for an excellent value through the exchanges.
(and also you get insurance negotiated rates, not the charge master rates, free preventative care and many plans make you only contribute copays toward your deductible. So I’m not asking for celebration, but can we please stop slagging an excellent achievement — which Biden made better.