When we talk about health insurance, we are actually conflating two different aspects of health care management. One aspect involves the risk management, the traditional role of insurance. This part of a plan involves the unlikely but costly need for medical procedures like surgeries and serious illnesses. The other aspect involves budget management where one might anticipate a certain number of medical expenses for wellness care and minor illnesses over the course of a year.
The different plans allow the user to balance these two aspects. A person who is willing and able to handle their own budget management can opt for bronze and just cover their risk. Another person who has more budget constraints or has a more uncertain budget might choose a higher level plan.
An analogy with car insurance would be a bronze level plan with liability coverage only meeting the state minimum mandate for coverage. The silver plan might add collision coverage to the liability, but still have a significant deductible. The gold plan then adds a maintenance contract on top of the regular insurance for collision and liability. The analogy is not exact, since all levels of the exchange health insurance include some "maintenance", but it gives the idea. A better analogy would involve setting coverage and deductibles for all three parts of car insurance then prepackaging them into only four choices.
That's the issue for me... why the hell should it be that complex?
I have a private health insurance supplement to cover things that our system doesn't cover (unless you're young or really hard up) such as dental and optical, but I also have it for private hospital.
BUT, I don't think my private insurance is anywhere near that complicated.
Benefit : you can claim up to $xxx in a 12 month period and you will get back xx% of what you paid. Oh and pre-existing conditions are covered after 12 months.
I get Muon's point, but you can't really compare traditional 'insurances' like car and house and contents - because most people will only call on them a few times in their life... but most people are sick or require some cost-related health activity on semi-regular basis.
Mind you, the issue has to be significant cost controls, that is where a huge whack of the problem comes from.
