The Aaron Carrol at the Incidental Economist did some window shopping on the Indiana Exchange and discovered significant system wide curve bending:
Silver plans for an individual range from $278 to $301 a month (before subsidies). This is far less than what the state released a while ago. For a family like mine, silver plans range from $938 to $1018 a month (before subsidies). What’s more, even the gold plans range from only $1175 to $1329 a month.
Since we know that the average employer sponsored health insurance plan for a family in the US is $16,351, that means the most expensive gold plan on the exchange, at $15,948, is cheaper. Let me say that again: The most expensive plan I could find for a family line mine on the Indiana Health Insurance Exchange is less expensive than the average employer sponsored health insurance plan in the US.
Given Dr. Carrol’s life situation ( high end researcher with an M.D.) odds are that he would get little to no subsidies on the Exchange AND his current employer picks up a very high percentage of his employer sponsored health insurance, so he would be individually worse off going to the Exchange. However most employer coverage ranges from high Bronze to high Silver, so if Gold plans total costs are coming in at or under average high Silver commercially provided costs, this is a massive cost savings.