PITIFUL!

Despite Obamacare reforms, health care costs are now so prohibitively expensive that people who have insurance are skipping medical procedures, tests and medicines because of such high deductibles. Which were on the rise even before Obamacare. Essentially, we're still deeply screwed.

USA TODAY: Dilemma over deductibles: Costs crippling middle class

RATHER THAN PAY SO MUCH OUT-OF-POCKET, MANY SKIP CHECKUPS, SCRIMP ON CARE

"A recent Commonwealth Fund survey found that four in 10 working-age adults skipped some kind of care because of the cost, and other surveys have found much the same. The portion of workers with annual deductibles — what consumers must pay before insurance kicks in — rose from 55% eight years ago to 80% today, according to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And a Mercer study showed that 2014 saw the largest one-year increase in enrollment in "high-deductible plans" — from 18% to 23% of all covered employees.

“People put off care or they split their pills. They do without.”

Meanwhile the size of the average deductible more than doubled in eight years, from $584 to $1,217 for individual coverage. Add to this co-pays, co-insurance and the price of drugs or procedures not covered by plans — and it's all too much for many Americans.

Holly Wilson of Denver, a communications company fraud investigator who has congestive heart failure and high blood pressure, recently went without her blood pressure pills for three months because she couldn't afford them, given her $2,500 deductible. Her blood pressure shot so high, her doctor told her she risked a stroke.

And LaRita Jacobs of Seminole, Fla., who gets insurance through her husband's job and has an annual family income of $70,000, says $7,500 a year in out-of-pocket costs kept her from dealing with an arthritis-related neck problem until it got so bad she couldn't lift a fork. She's now putting off shoulder surgery.

"How did we get to this crazy life?" asks Jacobs, 54. "We're struggling to pay our bills like we were struggling when we first got started."

Why is this happening? Many patients and doctors blame corporate greed — a view insurers and business leaders reject. Some employers in turn blame the Affordable Care Act, saying it has forced them to pare down generous plans so they don't have to pay a "Cadillac tax" on high-cost coverage in 2018. But health care researchers point to a convergence of trends building for years: the steep rise in deductibles even as premiums stabilize, corporate belt-tightening since the economic downturn and stagnant middle-class wages."

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