I saw that yesterday. They were struck by the Italian State Mint; however, by all other accounts I've seen they're papal commemorative mint medals and not coins. Much lower interest.

October Surprise...

I'm in the middle of enrolling. I've been confused by a couple questions (for instance I used my pers payout to pay off student loan, etc) but so far it's working.

are you using the federal website?

I'm really confused as to the options I pick from. I think I'll stop now and look into it later.

healthcare.gov? Yeah.

Is there another one??????????

There are state run exchanges that let you shop for a health insurance plan, distinctly different from the federal online exchange. I was not sure where you're shopping. For example, here in Washington, the online marketplace is:

https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/

so, I followed your link IM, just to see it, see where it took me. I was just browsing, and after a couple clicks, it sent me to the same place I'd just posted about, https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/.

I started out at healthcare.gov. It asked me what state I'm in. OHIO tells you you are going to use healthcare.gov. I suppose in WA they tell you they will be transferring you to your state site.

So it obviously varies state to state. I was in some part of HEALTHCARE.GOV the entire time.

thanks for the clarification. I'm keenly interested to hear about your experience with the whole process. Good luck and please keep us posted. :)

Just as another data point:

I just got our first email regarding open enrollment for health insurance with my employer. My current insurance plan is going to increase about 7% in the next year. That's a little higher than it has increased in previous years, but not dramatically higher.

I bet my pay will increase by about 1% next year. Another year, another opportunity to figure out how to tighten the belt some more.

An interesting new plan option is a very high deductible, low cost plan paired with a pretax medical savings account that will rollover unspent contributions from one year to the next. I wonder if we should gamble on our health?

The family deductible will be $3000/year under the new plan. I wonder how much cheaper the premiums will be? It would have to be at least $250/month cheaper for me to even consider that gamble.

Does that include the refunds you've gotten?

I tried out the healthcare.gov web site for a relative in PA. It transferred me to PA and I was able to find the available plans. Everything worked fine.

It should. The refunds were a lot smaller this year. They warned us about that.

keep us posted on how this works. so far in Mississippi, only 35 people have been able to register. i'll have to pick up insurance for the kids next year when I lose tricare