Once nearly buried by medical bills, a farmer braces for insurance drought

Darvin Bentlage’s health insurance plan used to be the same as all the other cattle farmers in Barton County, Mo., he said: to stay healthy until he turned 65, then get on Medicare. But when he turned 50, things did not go according to plan.  “Well, I had a couple of issues,” he said.That’s putting it mildly.Over two years, he dealt with hepatitis C and diverticulitis. That was on top of his persistent kidney stones, diabetes and other health problems.“I had to go back and refinance the farm,” he said. “By the time the two years was up, I had run up between $70,000 and $100,000 in hospital bills.”He does not want to end up in that situation again, so he is paying close attention to what Republican health care billworking its way through Congress might mean for him.He racked up those medical bills in 2007. Bentlage said that given his preexisting conditions, health insurance became impossibly expensive — a problem because he needed more health care. So when the Affordable Care Act exchanges opened in 2013, he said, “I was probably one of the first ones to get online with it and walk through it.”About a quarter of the people on the exchanges are between 55 and 64, and they have more health problems than younger people do. So they have a lot on the line if the Affordable Care Act gets replaced. Under the GOP plan, older people’s insurance cost could rise dramatically, but the subsidies would be capped at $4,000. That’s less than half of what Bentlage is getting now under the ACA.