[Rebelgecko]

Are you in a state that has pushed back against ACA? Or maybe you're only looking at the "bronze" tier, which will be skewed towards low cost HMOs and HDHPs?

FWIW, in California I see like 5 different options for HMO across all of the tiers, a couple are local ones I've never heard of, but there's also some like Kaiser that are fairly large networks.

[heavyset_go]

I'm in a state that championed the ACA, and there are dozens of plans available on the individual market, but none of them are very good. There are plans from large insurers for large networks, but those plans are much worse than any group policy plans employers can buy from the same exact insurers. And it gets even worse if you want to buy a market plan that covers your family.

[morpheuskafka]

This is for Orange County, NC, which has not expanded Medicaid but is using the regular federal ACA marketplace. There are definitely a lot of low cost/quality HMOs at the Bronze level, but across all tiers there are 63 HMOs, 3 PPOs, and 10 Point of Service (POS), a term I hadn't heard previously.

For comparison, I am on my mom's insurance from Belk Stores which is self-insured, offering three different HDHP PPO plans with a pretty good network and a range of deductibles within the HDHP window. Premiums are pretty bad. My dad worked for a SP500 semiconductor company before retiring, about five years ago they switched to HDHP-only, which just two options both at the higher end of the HDHP range. Premiums were better, but actual coverage not much better.