Compare
Six honest comparisons, including the ones we lose.
Every page here lays out the alternative's real advantages before it makes any case for private coverage. If the other option is better for you, that's what it will say.
How to read these
Two questions decide most of it: your health and your subsidy.
Almost every coverage decision comes down to whether a premium tax credit is available to your household, and whether your health history will pass underwriting. Everything else — networks, deductibles, referrals — is preference.
Does a subsidy reach your household?
If a premium tax credit covers a meaningful share of a marketplace premium — or if your income puts you in Medicaid range — that is usually the stronger financial answer, and no amount of network breadth changes it.
If the answer is yes, start with the marketplace.
Will your health history pass underwriting?
Private PPO plans are medically underwritten. A healthy applicant often pays less for a broader network; a complicated history can be rated, excluded or declined outright — and guaranteed-issue coverage exists for exactly that reason.
If the answer is no, guaranteed-issue is the safer route.
What's in every page
The same four moves, every single time.
No page here opens with a pitch. Each one lays out the alternative on its own terms first, then shows the trade-off in numbers, then says plainly who each option is for.
The alternative, at its best
Where it genuinely wins — written without hedging.
The costs, both ways
What each option takes from you, side by side.
The questions people ask
The things that come up once the table sinks in.
A plain verdict
Who each option is actually for, in one paragraph.
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