Regardless of that there is no benefit to the plan until you have spent over $11k for the year. A silver plan has a lower deductible. the other plan I mentioned with the lower deductible of 2500 but a $551.04 premium is still over 9k before you would get a benefit.
First of all, not really.
1) Your scenario there assumes you're accessing services in December, after you've paid all your premiums. In reality, you can use them right away, after only a single payment.
2) I looked up the
summary of benefits for the plan you posted--which, oddly enough, was the
second cheapest plan available in the market, not the very cheapest (I suspect you hit the "simple choice" option when viewing plans). You can indeed access certain services under the deductible, even in that bronze plan:
"Ded waived for first 3 Primary Care OV. Ded waived for Preventive Services, Generic Drugs, Preventive Drugs, Family Planning, Pediatric Vision, and OP MH/SA." In other words, your first three primary care visits are paid for (subject to the copay) long before you exhaust your deductible.
As for silver plans, the cheapest plan for the rating area you're looking at and the age you entered is a Molina plan for $418.30/month and a deductible of $2,400 (the deductible applies
only to inpatient and outpatient hospital care). In other words, for $984 more in premiums than the bronze plan you posted, you can get a $4,250 reduction in your deductible. If you're intending to use a moderate amount of services, seems like a no-brainer.
But if you plan to hit the OOP max (which is the same for both plans), you're better off with bronze anyway since premiums + OOP max are lower. That said, if your health expenses are that high, you're almost certainly a winner under the ACA so it's unclear what you're complaining about.
for a person like me who makes just a bit over the amount to get a subsidy that means that I would spend between 20 and 25% of my income on health insurance, before I got a benefit from it. none of those plans are usable to me. Luckily I have a plan through work that is more affordable. 128$ a month premium a 2600 deductible .. but still over a period of 3 years my insurance has covered a total of about $150. Health insurance is a mechanism to keep us poor.
Employers tend to pay about 72% of the premium for employer-based plans. If that holds in your case, the real total premium for that plan is closer to $460/month. For less than that, you could buy a SelectHealth silver plan in the exchange with a $1,500 deductible (SelectHealth is the insurance arm of Intermountain, one of the more famous integrated delivery systems in the country).
You're comparing a heavily subsidized employer plan to an unsubsidized plan in the open market, which isn't quite fair. Only if you compare the
total premiums of both plans will you get a clear picture.
