Steve Reyes: Navigating the Insurance "Rubik's Cube"

61-year-old Steve Reyes lives in Broward County, Florida, where he works in aircraft sales. He first got involved in the health care fight when he answered an email from Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s office asking to talk about the issue, because his premium had “shot through the roof.” He went to a meeting with other people dealing with the same problem, and the connection grew from there.

Health care coverage matters to Steve because, as he put it plainly, “You know what happens when you get sick, or you go to the doctor or you go to the hospital? You spend a lot of money.” Steve lives with a detached retina that left him blind in one eye, a preexisting condition that limits his options outside of the ACA. His goal, he said, has always been straightforward: “I am basically trying to make sure that my family has health care, and I want to avoid major bills with hospitals and doctors. You know, just like anybody else.”

Steve and his family — a household of four — first enrolled in ACA coverage around 2016 or 2017. “Way back then, almost nine years ago,” he shared, “it saved us a lot of money,” When the pandemic hit, Steve’s business, aviation, took a hard downturn. The ACA Marketplace, and later the enhanced premium tax credits, helped his family get through it. “That helped us for like a year or two, you know, we started coming back, the industry started coming back,” he said. “And the reduced cost helped a lot.” He was careful to explain that the system works by reporting income, and if a person’s business does well, the credits get clawed back later. He was fine with that arrangement.

The situation changed further this year. The listed price of his ACA plan — what the plan would cost without any subsidy applied — had already been climbing from $2,800 to $3,400 a month. But that wasn’t what he actually owed; with the enhanced tax credit applied, his out-of-pocket payment had stayed at $1,000 a month. Once he no longer qualified for that credit, all of those savings disappeared, leaving them paying the entire list price for coverage.

In May, Steve learned that Florida Blue had rolled out a new private plan for 2026 that was almost identical to the ACA plan they had, just repriced, and brought down his costs to $2,800 a month for his family of four, a good savings, but still almost triple their costs with the enhanced tax credits.

While advocating for health care affordability in Washington DC, Steve said he met other people facing the same crisis — people whose premiums had jumped from around $500 a month to $1,000 a month and who simply couldn’t afford it. “And if you have any kind of pre-existing conditions, forget it,” he said. “You either have the ACA, and pay through the nose, or you don’t. So, either you got to be really poor or really rich to afford it.”

Still shopping to try and find more savings, Steve shared that they tried applying for a medically underwritten plan — a private option in which the insurer reviews an applicant’s health history before deciding whether to offer coverage — and was rejected the same day, after providing a list of the medications his family takes. “You give them all your medicines that you take, and they assess you, your age or whatever they do there … So, we got rejected.” He said he planned to look into a United Healthcare plan as another option but hadn’t yet had the time to go through the process. He had hoped policymakers in Washington would resolve the issue. “But it’s never happened.”

Asked what he would tell lawmakers about why access to health care matters, Steve pointed to the history of failed attempts to control health care costs in the United States, from Nixon to Clinton to Obama. “This country as a whole pays too much insurance costs, or health care costs compared to the rest of the world when you look at those numbers,” he said. He questioned when the country would reach “an epiphany” and “figure out… that we need to do something other than listening to people that donate money to your campaign.”

Reflecting on what it’s like to navigate the insurance landscape today, Steve said, “It is like a Rubik’s Cube. You’ve got to know what to look at in the games they play when you look at policies, and you try to compare this, that, and the other.” He said doctors he has spoken with, including at his own practice and during his visit to a representative’s office, have told him they wish the system were simpler. “They’re like, whoa, Steve, I wish it would be so much easier if we were just on Medicare for All. Because it just lays everything out. You don’t have to play games. And everybody knows the numbers.” He added, “If it works for people 65 and older, why can’t it work for another segment of the population?”