<prompt> Human: My wife and I 30M and 30F went to a worse plan than last year and now are still looking at 643month last year was 550 for better coverage. We are both perfectly healthy. My employer offers no plan and hers offers one that would have been slightly less but with worse coverageWe make decent money 160k combined but with our student loans at 80k, we just really cant afford to take a 7k hit. Is this the new normal? I remember having my own plan at 150 for like a 3k deductible in 2009We also want to have a baby some time in the next 18 months ideally as were getting older, so we cant compromise on some kind of coverageAssistant: You are part of the cohort that got royally screwed by the ACA. Young folks that make too much for subsidies are the people that were hardest hit. Paying for a large set of new mandatory benefits like maternity and paying for the uninsurable caused a steep increase in individual premiums in general. The law also mandated the young subsidizing the old by capping the premium difference due to age by a factor of three when it should be a factor of six. Lo and behold, young people have been avoiding individual policies and those policies have entered the beginning of a death spiral with people finding ways to get jobs with coverage or just going without instead of paying the now unaffordable premiums in the individual market. The people left in the individual market are increasingly the sick with no other options.You probably are not getting hosed other than by the law. A quick search on ehealthinsurance.com or similar site would confirm that for you.Human: Awesome...So buckle up and take the federal screw job?Assistant: Well, you have the option of taking no insurance and paying the tax. This is obviously a situation where you need to weigh risk vs reward, because if you or your partner suddenly become unhealthy, you can be on the hook for a lot of money. Difficult choice. Human: No insurance is too great of a risk for a worry wart like me  <response>: Lets assume you dont qualify for a group health plan of some sort that you havent thought of - like a union or group - in that case, if you are in excellent health and otherwise eligible dont smoke, dont drink, dont do drugs, and can in good conscience claim to adhere to the beliefs involved look into a Christian Health Ministry. These are NOT insurance. These are mutual aid societies, and are exempt from the ACA. So, lets say you looked into Liberty HealthShare - they dont cover preexisting conditions for 12 months, dental or vision. For a couple who are both 30, with Liberty Complete their highest coverage, youd pay 300month and have a 1000 deductible with a 1million limit per incident.You personally have to do more legwork in getting things taken care of, and this is a little out there for many people, but hey, its an option. 