re: Health Insurance Costs Are Out Of Control

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$1,800 to $2,000 is the norm for family coverage.

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That is absolutely insane. I pay $660 per month for my family's health insurance (family of 3).

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That is absolutely insane. I pay $660 per month for my family's health insurance (family of 3).

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I don’t know what kind of coverage you have or where you are. Maybe you’re lucky. I have years of personal experience with this as a partner in a professional business where the partners pay the full cost of their own coverage. Currently, the cost for comprehensive BCBS coverage is $1,800+ per month.

Grok:

Cernovich's post critiques high ACA Silver plan premiums—around $3,600 monthly with deductibles up to $12,000 in the quoted example—by claiming undocumented immigrants receive free coverage subsidized by citizens.

Undocumented immigrants remain ineligible for federal ACA subsidies, Marketplace plans, or full Medicaid, though Emergency Medicaid covers acute crises at low cost (1-2% of program spending), and some states fund limited care independently.

The assertion echoes 2025 shutdown debates, where Republicans tied budget disputes to alleged immigrant benefits, but experts confirm such coverage expansions target citizens and legal residents facing subsidy expirations.

ACA didn’t “go away” when the mandate penalty was removed because the law is much broader than that. Premiums are rising due to systemic healthcare cost drivers, not because of undocumented immigrants or uninsured people.

I fully agree with the statement “Health insurance costs are out of control”. Premiums are rising faster than wages and inflation, driven by expensive drugs, chronic disease, hospital pricing, and market concentration. For many families, the cost of coverage now rivals a second mortgage or car payment, making it one of the most pressing financial challenges in the U.S.

FYI, I worked for a large tertiary care hospital for 3 years. (Sometimes affectionately refrerred to as the "Knife and Gun Club" because of the type of people that would show up in the ER since we had a Level 1 Trauma Center and Level 3 Neonatal Unit).

The situation is complicated. Federal law requires hospitals to stabilize anyone in an emergency—citizens and non-citizens alike. The actual cost of emergency care for undocumented immigrants is less than 1% of Medicaid spending, while they contribute tens of billions in taxes every year. Most rely on community clinics or avoid care altogether until it’s urgent. The real drivers of rising health costs are expensive drugs, chronic disease, and hospital pricing—not immigrant ER visits.

Kaiser Foundation Article On Costs

Good article on "Paying The Bill".

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No, its not some grand conspiracy

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Maybe not a GRAND conspiracy, but John Gruber does say hi.

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For profit healthcare companies and insurance providers are extracting massive amounts of cash from the consumers.

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And Obamacare increased their ability to do so. If you think that's an accident, I don't know what to tell you.

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This is made worse because the government pays for a substantial amount of healthcare for people.

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What do you mean by that? Do you mean Medicare and Medicaid? Do you mean that they pay for health INSURANCE and have just fallen for the politician's trick of erasing the difference in people's minds between the two?

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Things would actually be better than they are now on a single payer system

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No, they wouldn't, they'd just be different. You'd just have different problems. That would mainly revolve around quality of care and accessibility of care. It would be less expensive, and "you get what you pay for" would be on everyone's lips instead of "I can't believe how expensive this is."

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The hybridized approach is the issue.

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There is no single issue. Although I will say this: any time you have one entity receiving a service, another one providing it, and a 3rd paying for it, both prices and utilization will be artificially inflated. There's no way around that except to artificially suppress those things, which is what would happen with "single payer" care (if it was indeed successful at lowering costs.) But there's no way for water to seek its own level.

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A hybridized model does not and will not work.

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Of course it could. You could provide every US citizen with a catastrophic insurance policy held and administered through a private entity, all routine/elective care care could be out-of-pocket, and you could have public clinics funded by the government only for people who fall below a certain threshold for income. If indigent people can find a way to make it to the hospital for their routine care, which they do now, they can make it to the county free clinic.

That would allow supply, demand, and transparency to drive down the cost of
routine care, save everyone the expense of carrying health insurance, save the administrative costs of processing insurance claims for all but the catastrophic cases, and still cover everyone. The tax increases and out of pocket expenses (which, with today's deductibles, people are already paying now) would be offset by the reduction in cost for all the rest of it.

It's not perfect, but there is no perfect system.

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is that for a family where the main earner is self employed?

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Yes, self-employed / small business owner.

It's like a penalty for being self-reliant / having your own business. Being an employee of some corporation is incentivized in this way.

Also, who wants to have a big family when it means you're gonna have to shell out $50,000 grand or more per year for health insurance?

We're penalizing hard workers and giving freebies to freeloaders. And they're having a ton of kids. The whole thing is a trainwreck.

Plus the outrageous deductibles

Scam

My family of 4 pays $26,200.

fricking ridiculous.

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Know someone who's paying $28,800 per year for health insurance for a family of three ($2,400 per month). Probably paying just as much or more for his mortgage.

Millions of illegals using the ER as primary care.

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Family of 3 here. $2100 per MONTH with a $7,000 deductible.

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Millions of People who can no longer afford health insurance using the ER as primary care.

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Fixed that for ya

Your total costs are going to be similar. You just don’t see them because they’re paid by your employer.