Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/204210
Tough health care choices Owner-operators weigh penalties vs. costs of private insurance or exchange policies By Todd Dills Is Obamacare affecting your 2014 insurance preparations? I plan to purchase insurance through the new exchanges Yes 35% 3% 8% 23% I will not purchase insurance; I'll pay the penalty My current insurer's rates are going up 24% 23% I haven't heard from I haven't priced plans on the exchanges my insurer on rates 5% I plan to carry my current insurance at the same rates 5% No 46% OverdriveOnline.com poll My current insurer's rates are going down I don't know 9% Many owner-operators plan to stick with their current health insurance through next year, while a comparable number planned on paying the tax penalty that will come with continuing to have no insurance. Penalties for 2014 will be assessed on your 2014 income tax return, due April 15, 2015, and will equal just $95 per individual or $47.50 per child. For a family of four, it'd be $285 or 1 percent of total adjusted income, whichever is greater. Penalties rise for the two years after that, peaking in the 2016 tax year at $695 per adult, $347 per child and $2,085 for a family of four – or 2.5 percent of family income, whichever is greater. W ith the open enrollment period beginning in new state and federal health insurance exchanges Oct. 1, owneroperators got their first looks at new options for insurance. For North Carolina independent Bryan Spoon, 41, and his girlfriend and business partner, Anna Lowdermilk – who works the load boards and trusted brokers – it represented a chance to get newly insured. "I bought my first truck in 2004, and in 2007, we filed for our own authority," says Spoon, who gets a cash discount from his hometown doctor in Grandy, N.C. "I can go to urgent care if I get injured," he says. Spoon thought he could improve his health care situation, so with the opening of the exchanges, he started shopping for coverage early. "I worry about falling off a trailer and breaking my leg," says Spoon, who pulls a Great Dane flatbed with his 2009 Volvo 780. He says in most situations, a policy with a somewhat high deductible would meet his needs. "If I'm someplace far from home and I have to use emergency room service, I can work out a $5,000 bill with a hospital," he says. But emergency surgery or a lengthy hospital stay "could break me." Like so many others shopping on the exchanges, Spoon hasn't gotten far in enrolling, but his thoughts reflect the case for many uninsured people. It's also part of the dynamic that mandatory insurance is designed to combat. If everyone has insurance, the thinking goes, and doctors and hospitals get paid for all services, care costs will become more standardized and fall. However, getting the millions currently uninsured into the exchanges and enrolled is proving a daunting task. Attempts by Overdrive to access the federal exchange – the primary application point for residents of the 34 states that have no state-run exchange – in early October never got past creating a user account. Spoon went further, getting stuck in the identity-verification stage of the tax- 30 | Overdrive | November 2013 Obamacare.indd 30 10/29/13 11:56 PM