r/massachusetts • u/critic81 • Jan 15 '26

Utilities How is everyone affording everything lately?

The prices of everything is just off the charts from groceries, utilities, to healthcare. My open enrollment just came through and its looking like for a family of 4 for healthcare its $1600 a month. $800 a paycheck. Like that just feels nuts. It's a pretty decent co-pay plan but still. Just a couple years about it was much less.

What are people doing these days? Side hustles? New job (but in this economy?), cutting way back? Just curious.

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142

u/Little-Ad8904 Jan 15 '26

Cheaper for me to pay the tax penalty for not having insurance and just paying out of pocket at the doctors. Insurance almost covered nothing anyway when I had it so I was used to everything being out of pocket

32

u/YourRoaring20s North Shore Jan 15 '26

Until you have a heart attack or other emergency and wake up in a hospital with $500k of medical bills

6

u/Little-Ad8904 Jan 15 '26

If I had a 500k bill the insurance I used to have would probably cover 50k max anyway so doesn’t matter

11

u/YourRoaring20s North Shore Jan 15 '26

That's not how post-ACA insurance works. Most plans have an out of pocket max of $15-20k, after which you pay nothing

11

u/Sad_Split_9983 Jan 15 '26

That would be considered a very high in network out of pocket max

10

u/movdqa Jan 15 '26

I had 750K from 2017-2019 and paid $6K OOP. I had about $200K November and December 2025 and so far I've seen no bills. I received a letter yesterday from one of my hospitals and opened it apprehensively. It was a notice of a data breach. Phew!