[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.