I am in my early 50s, and my wife is in her mid-40s. We have a nice nest egg, mostly because we lived well below our means and invested well, plus a small inheritance from my mother-in-law grew into a fairly sizeable chunk. Theoretically we could probably retire right now, but I want a little more of a cushion in case the market turns bad (since I have no pension to fall back on for guaranteed income). But the one x-factor in all this is medical insurance. I have worked for large companies my entire life and always had pretty good insurance. The issue is that my wife has a pre-existing heart condition. With Obamacare in place, we would be able to get insurance and not be denied or charged thru the roof based on the pre-existing condition. Now that the mandate has been repealed, I figure Obamacare is going to implode sooner rather than later. Given that the Republicans CLEARLY do not have a palatable replacement in mind (due to the disaster of their proposed plan a few months ago), I have no idea what will happen next. It would really s*ck if I have to work until I'm in my mid-70s until my wife is eligible for Medicare (assuming they don't raise the age in the next 20 years) just because of this. And, or course, there's no guarantee I can continue to work that long. My company may lay me off, or I may develop a medical condition preventing me from working etc.
I am wondering if anyone knows how things were before Obamacare, if I was currently insured and then get laid off, and then went on COBRA for as long as I could to stay insured, would I have been denied coverage due to the pre-existing condition if I didn't ever let my insurance lapse? Of course, there's no guarantee that we would even go back to THAT system either, but I am just curious if there's a decent chance that I would be able to get insurance, and therefore be able to retire early.
I know my situation right now isn't as dire as many others affected by pre-existing conditions, but it's still a major thing for us. I don't want to turn this into a political discussion, as this can certainly turn the thread into an ugly exchange between the two political ideologies that seem to be embattled more and more as time goes on.
I am wondering if anyone knows how things were before Obamacare, if I was currently insured and then get laid off, and then went on COBRA for as long as I could to stay insured, would I have been denied coverage due to the pre-existing condition if I didn't ever let my insurance lapse? Of course, there's no guarantee that we would even go back to THAT system either, but I am just curious if there's a decent chance that I would be able to get insurance, and therefore be able to retire early.
I know my situation right now isn't as dire as many others affected by pre-existing conditions, but it's still a major thing for us. I don't want to turn this into a political discussion, as this can certainly turn the thread into an ugly exchange between the two political ideologies that seem to be embattled more and more as time goes on.