Since it is highly unlikely that my grandfathered health insurance plan will be offered to me next year, I have been looking at various health care strategies for 2017. I see two options available to us, self-insurance or figuring out a way to get subsidized health insurance.

1. Our favorite option is to self-insure from 2017 until 2019 when we become eligible for Medicare. The reason we are self-insuring is because health insurance from the exchange is greater than 8.05% of our adjusted gross income. The good news is that we are exempt from the individual mandate tax because health insurance is too expensive. In 2016 we are on schedule to max out our Health Savings Account(HSA) contribution. Assuming that we do not have any significant medical issues before 2017 we will start the year out with about $10,000 in the HSA. In 2017 we plan on depositing an amount equivalent to our current health insurance premium, $547, into a savings account. Ideally it would be a HSA since a HSA account should be completely flexible. Under current regulations people who self-insure are not allowed to contribute to a HSA. If we run into a major medical issue we will either pay it, delay treatment until we can get health insurance from the exchange, or use an interim health insurance plan to tie us over until we become eligible to purchase insurance from the exchange. If we can make it through 2017 without a major medical issue, we could enter 2018 with about $16,500 in savings for medical care.
2. An option I have not fully evaluated are strategies to reduce my taxable income below the subsidy threshold(4 times the Federal Poverty Limit). If we both contributed to a traditional IRA then our Adjusted Gross Income might qualify. Even if we qualified for a health insurance plan through the health exchange, I am not sure it we would buy it. My grandfathered health insurance plan has a $3,000/$5,000 deductible. This means I need to dedicate about $5,000 of my emergency fund to health care costs. When I look at the health insurance plans on the exchanges, they had much higher deductibles, $6,500/$13,000.  In this case I should have about $13,000 in my emergency fund. If you have only $10,000 and are healthy, it probably make more sense to use our health care money to build up the savings until we exceed $13,000 money and then use an interim health insurance plan to tie us over until the next health insurance exchange enrollment period.