Many of the newly insured are ready to declare the law’s benefits. Barbara Doucet, 63, of Newnan, Georgia, sais she can afford health insurance for the first time in 14 years and no longer worries about what might happen should she have an accident or become seriously ill.
“I was scared constantly, absolutely terrified that something would happen and what would I do. I didn’t sleep really well for a long, long, long, long time,” Doucet, a waitress and reform advocate, told Reuters in an interview arranged through Consumers Union, a public advocacy group that sees Obamacare as a benefit to consumers.
“I’m extremely pleased with ACA, I really am,” she said.
Stories like Doucet’s clash with tales of people who find insurance more expensive because of Obamacare’s expanded coverage requirements.
Amy Newbold, a 57-year-old saleswoman from Randolph County, North Carolina, lost her employer insurance last year.
Through HealthCare.gov, she found a mid-tier “silver” plan with premiums that at first blush are $75 a month lower than her previous policy. But there are no savings, she says, since her old premiums were paid with pretax dollars and Obamacare premiums are paid with aftertax dollars. Newbold said she faces substantially higher drug costs for arthritis and psoriasis and worries that an out-of-pocket maximum of $5,000 could put needed medicines out of reach.
“I feel left out in the cold, and I don’t know why it has to be that way,” she said in an interview arranged through the office of Republican U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers, an Obamacare opponent from North Carolina.