Well, it wasn’t so easy and simple, but I’m just about there as of today.

Like millions of Americans , I jumped on the Healthcare.gov website right away and got caught up in the endless loops that frustrated all of us in early October.  But, because I have routinely dealt with frustrating website and computer system implementations in my career I recognized the challenges faced by the web developers and chalked it off to growing pains.  And decided to simply give it a rest and wait for a while.

After 3 weeks and reading some positive news around the internet, I thought I’d give it another try.  Assuming a corrupted data file from my original application,  I entered a new email address and username.  I actually made a lot of progress…got identity verified, subsidy calculated, was even able to look at real honest to goodness plans.  But the darn system would not let me actually enroll.  Well, not exactly, it had 2 of me listed, one could select a plan, but the other couldn’t.  And I couldn’t get actually enrolled.  And, quite frankly, the chat help and phone help were not helpful.  So , again, I decided to give it a rest and wait a while.

Well, on November 16 at 8:00pm, I figured it might be time to try again.  So, yes, I applied with a new email address and username and 20 minutes later completed the process and got an enrollment confirmed.  It would have been a bit longer, but I already knew from attempt #2 what plan I wanted to select.  The instructions said I would receive follow-up information from the insurance company with payment instructions and confirmed details about the plan.  So, I went to bed that night feeling pretty darn good.

Today, I received 2 letters from Florida Blue.  One of them gave me instructions on how to access the plan specifics called Summary of Benefit Coverage which I logged into right away to make sure that what they had was the same as what I selected.  Yep, all good.  The second was payment instructions, the amount due and due date.  Yep, all good here as well.  

So I went on the website and set up my first payment as an electronic transfer from my checking account and set up e-billing for future payments.  And now, I am good to go.

Alright, I know you are still pondering about the trip to Paris part…right?

All my life I have wanted to go to Paris (minored in French in college), but could never quite find the time or money to go.  I always thought I would be able to afford it when I retired, but that nasty blossoming health insurance premium just stood in my way.

Not anymore, because…

The premium on the Marketplace for a plan very similar to the one I have now is $743/month.

Based on my projected annual income of $20,000 I am entitled to a $574/month subsidy.  I have elected to only have $450/month applied to the premium and will receive an additional tax credit when I complete my 2014 taxes of around $1488 depending on where my income actually falls.

So the financial impact on my annual budget has been dramatically reduced from a whopping $9816 to a really fantastic $2033.  That’s $7783 in savings for me.  

Oh, I forgot some other really important stuff about Obamacare…because of my income, I also qualified for Cost sharing subsidies for Deductibles and Maximum Out of Pocket (MOOP).  I don’t think it gets any better than this…$750 deductible, $1250 MOOP.

So now, I can afford to go to Paris, but I can also afford to do 2 even more really cool things.  First, I can set up an automatic monthly contribution to the Harry Chapin Food Bank here in Southwest Florida.  And, I can look around for good progressive candidates whose campaigns could really use a donation to move the cause forward.

Thank you President Obama and the members of Congress who made all of this possible.

And, thank you KOS Villagers for coming along with me on my journey.