Start thinking outside the box
Whatever the decision of the SC re: pre-existing and/or high risk conditions, the health care industry is a serious business in the US and they will do whatever it takes to make a profit at your expense. Even if the SC leaves the HCA intact (IMHO they will toss out the entire law) it will get circumvented once it starts to be put into place. As a retired military who was promised free health care for life I can say one thing, the government will screw you at every opportunity. If you believe our government is a benevolent institution out to assist it's citizens then you are in big trouble. Same for insurance companies. Getting adequate health care is one of the big reasons we opted to live outside the US in Hungary where health care is excellent, cheap, and easy to get. We pay cash for everything (which also bypasses all lines and waiting times) and as we are still covered by the military's Tricare Overseas (crappy plan with a $150 deductible and 75% of "reasonable" expenses). There is a cap of $3000 of out of pocket for catastrophic care which hopefully we will never need to find out about. For this reason alone we keep a cash reserve of $250k for that eventual emergency which we don't need otherwise and it is easy to get when and if we need it. But under Tricare, you must pay cash up front, submit a claim, and wait for payment. The error rate on claims is over 400% but eventually they get it right (it requires hours of phone calls and resubmissions of claims) and we get generally re-imbursed sometime between 6-12 months later. We have had our fair share of expenses here with my having cataract surgery and retinal re-attachment (cheap at a bit more than $1000), my wife fell and broke her tib/fib with extensive surgery which also came to a bit more than $1000 (inclusive of everything including ambulance and emergency room. A doctor's visit to the house costs $35 and she is getting physical therapy at home for $15 and hour. It is actually hard to spend a lot on health care here. There is a national insurance plan which for permanent visa costs a bit more than $25 a month. But up until you get permanent status (3 years) it costs roughly $500 a month for 2 people. My advice is to start realizing that the entire health care system model in the US is broken and not likely to get better regardless of what politicians say. Greed motivates everything and costs are rising roughly 30% a year (why is it again that the inflation rate is so low?). There is a good reason health care CEO's get some of the largest bonuses in the US and it isn't for paying out for services. Health care shouldn't be a business and everyone in the industry shouldn't be expecting to get rich. It should, and would be in a country that cares about it's citizens, be low cost or even covered by the government. [mod edit] After all, the US is a fiat currency which has no actual value and they can print money with no end in sight (recall the debt ceiling debacle last year) so why not just print a little more for something like this? Anyway, there are plenty of places outside the US with good and low cost health care. [mod edit] We opted to leave the US forever and haven't looked back once (well we do miss Costco, but then again it is coming to Europe this year). I encourage others to start thinking along the same lines about life outside the US where values are placed more appropriately.