What Obamacare Means To Preppers and Self-Sufficiency

Do you have car insurance?  If you drive a car you probably do.   This is because it is mandated at the state level that each car be insured.  The need for car insurance is quite common sense as driving is a privilege.  There is no other common activity in which you can affect the lives and liberty of other individuals and their property as driving.  In one instant, by accident, you can cause a person great financial damage and bodily harm.  In order to maintain the rights of the next person car insurance is a necessity for the privilege of driving.

On the surface the need for health insurance parallels car insurance in many ways.  One accident or one sickness can incur tremendous financial burden on the individual.  Buying health insurance at any age makes sense because accidents can happen at any age.  As we age our risk for disease also increases and so does the need for health insurance.  Until now, though, it was a choice for the individual to risk not having insurance.  The penalty for not having it might be financial ruin.  But there is a difference between car insurance and health insurance.  Driving is a privilege whereas living is not.  Government mandated health insurance is a tax on living.  There is now no way out of it for the individual.  This is the root evil with Obamacare but as you will learn there are many insidious twists, especially where a person who wishes to be self-sufficient is concerned.

Insurance companies exist to make money, period.  Just like any other business they do not exist to employ people nor provide a service.  The bottom line is to profit.  I can’t begrudge them.  As a small business owner I too strive to make a profit.  The devil is in the details, so they say.

Let me ask you a question.  When you look at your gas gauge and it is approaching empty, do you expect your car insurance company to take care of it?  If you did, do you realize what that would mean to the cost of driving?  Remember the previous paragraph?  Let’s assume for an instant that car insurance covered everything involved in driving, fill-ups, oil changes, maintence, tires, and repairs (along with accidents).  When you pulled up to the pump, you just swipe your insurance card.  The moment you do pay no attention to the price at the pump, it no longer means anything.  Since the insurance company is concerned only with making a profit that $3.25 gallon of gas will cost…who knows?  After the paper pushers, salesmen, actuaries, underwriters, and CEO’s get their cut that gallon of gas may now cost you $10.  The same with everything else, tires, oil changes etc.  Your monthly car insurance bill that previously only covered accidents and may have cost you $1000 a year is now $20,000 a year.

Why is this relevant?  Because this is how Obamacare treats health insurance.  The cost of health insurance must, by definition, skyrocket when every doctors visit is “covered”,  when each plan has to include things like behavioral health treatment, rehab, alcohol treatment, diet consoling, HIV screening, STD screening, birth control and on and on and on.  Since the individual at any moment can decide to take advantage of all of these “free” components, and many will, they must be accounted for in premiums.  Just like the car insurance example the cost you would have paid for a service will be exponentially higher.  Obamacare aside, the demand by customers to pay more for healthcare services in the form of lower co-pays, deductibles, and broadened coverage has in part been responsible for the dramatic rise in health insurance.  Remember, the insurance company has to make money on everything it touches.

So what does this mean to an individual with a desire to be self-sufficient?

Take me for example.  I am under 40 and have a wife and children.  I am currently employed full-time with company provided health insurance.  I also run the Tin Hat Ranch YouTube Channel, Facebook Page, and Website.  I started the Tin Hat Ranch in hopes that someday I could grow it to provide portable income in my plan to be self-sufficient.  Let’s assume for a moment that I was totally self-sufficient.  I owned my home outright; I could grow my own food, water, electricity, heat, etc. by alternative means.  I would then have to provide for just a few things, any goods and services I desired and property taxes (time for another rant!).  Since I’ve left my day job a service I would desire would be catastrophic health insurance, the kind with a high deductible that covers major medical issues.  In the past this type of insurance was very affordable, mostly because it isn’t used unless something terrible happens.  This type of plan might have cost me a few hundred dollars a month with a $10k or $15k deductible.

A visit…well several visits to healthcare.gov has given me a very rude awakening.  Theminimum plan I can now purchase is $845 a month.  $10,140 a year.  You guys would have to watch over 5 million Tin Hat Ranch videos a year just to cover that nut.  The truly sad fact is what the insurance doesn’t cover.  Sure, I myself can get “free” condoms and abortions.  But for this huge sum of money the individual deductible is $5,000, the family deductible is $10,000, and the maximum out of pocket expense, per year, is $12,700.  After the deductible the plan covers only 60% of expenses!

I hate math.  If I got sick to the tune of $15,000 in a year, here is what it would mean-

• I’d pay the first $5,000 out of pocket.
• For the next $7,700 I would pay $3080, the insurance would pay $4,620
• After I reached the $12,700 maximum out of pocket expense the insurance would pick up the remaining $2,300
• I’d still be paying $845 a month the whole time

To “cover” a $15,000 medical bill I’d pay $18,220.

Those of you who are very keen at math may think you have caught me making a mistake, and in one sense you are correct.  Had I purchased an old catastrophic plan with a $15,000 deductible and an annual yearly premium of $3000 you might notice my total out of pocket expense would still be $18,000.

The Bottom Line

It is the years that we don’t incur medical bills that make the difference.  If I live an “average” life I might not exceed those levels for another 25 or 30 years.  Assuming premiums never rose again (haha), I am now required by law to pay $10,140 a year, or about $7,000 a year more than I would have chosen to pay on my own free will.  A socialized medicine tax, if you will.  Since my plan is to one day be completely self-sufficient, in addition to my government mandated property taxes I now have to account for a $7,000 a year medical tax.  Just to live I have to pay the government, first for my home and now for my health.   If the average American would wake up and care we’d run Washington into the Potomac inside of a half an hour.

Everyone you know needs to read this to understand what Obamacare has done to health insurance.  They need to understand that everything that goes through an insurance company inherently costs more because the insurance company is in existence to make a profit.  You need to understand that Obamacare forces medical expenses through this profit generator.  Again, there is nothing wrong with profit the problem is you know longer have a choice not to participate!  Please share with fellow preppers , people who work to be self-sufficient, friends, and family.  We can still stop it before it destroys this country completely.