No, this is what article says:

"So the gap between plan cancellations and new plan sign-ups is considerably smaller than these numbers suggest."

"The only major financial risk being taken not being insured is an expensive acute illness (like one where the costs run way over $10K.) And there are lots of plus factors to not signing up, like being able to go to any doctor or lab or clinic that takes money as well as insurance. You can be paying the insurance company the $4,000 or $5,000 or $6,000 deductible a year, as well as premiums, if you need medical care, or can remain uninsured and pay that or less directly to providers of your choice without any insurance premium costs."

Without that "major financial risk," no one would sign up for individual insurance at all. Even before Obamacare. Why would they? For decades, long before HSAs, I paid out of pocket for everything. I went without recommended procedures because I was below my deductible. All because of the risk of the actue illness.

(At one time, you might remember, you couldn't even get reimbursed for an annual check up. My doctors always made up some excuse for the visit, so I could submit it against my deductible.)

I suspect most people in the individual market--especially if they're as cost-conscious as you portray them--paid a lot of medical expenses out of pocket to keep premiums as low as possible. It's not as if these plans were all that generous --and as is the case now--you had to balance premium costs and deductibles and copays and formularies to arrive at true cost figure.

I don't see where you come up with "lots of plus factors." If folks want to pay cash for medical expenses in order to be able to see the specialist of their choice, they can do that with or without a policy. As, I guess, they've been doing up to now. The only difference is that, with an HSA, which, as I say, is clearly an option in VA, you can write it off, in effect. Yes, they still have to pay a premium to get coverage, but that goes back to acute coverage. Do they want to go without that? Be my guest.

And frankly, if these folks have the money to pay out of pocket to see any doctor or specialist anywhere in the country--if they're big out of pocket health care consumers--then they should have the money to protect themselves against catastrophic illness. If they don't want to, well, that's their choice. But they aren't getting "priced out," as it were.

"Throw into the mix that if they sign up they might have plenty of inconveniences or outright real troubles like changing doctors, getting approval for seeing specialists and waiting longer for appointments. I suspect of those with canceled plans who have not signed up, many will weigh this risk and take it. Especially since if they get an expensive chronic rather than an acute illness, there is no pre-existing condition prohibition to keep them from signing up in a later open enrollment period as their expenses mount."

True. But again, these folks have been paying for most of these things out of pocket all along. And you're painting a scenario in which most of the expenses won't put them over the deductible limit anyway. So they are free to see all these people and pay cash as before. It won't be covered, but then, it wasn't really covered before AND they paid for it.

All this said, people who aren't regular doctor-see-ers because they don't have chronic or special or acute situations shouldn't have a problem changing doctors. They will save money.

In my experience, the doctors I wanted to see (based on recommendations) NEVER participated in my insurance plan. They were always out of network AND the insurance companies had developed TWO separate deductibles--one for in-network and one for out-of-network doctors.

There is no pre-existing condition exclusion, but somehow, I doubt the companies will pay for a year's worth of expenses racked up during a year when you weren't covered. Do you feel lucky?

Throw into the mix that if they sign up they might have plenty of inconveniences or outright real troubles like changing doctors, getting approval for seeing specialists and waiting longer for appointments. I suspect of those with canceled plans who have not signed up, many will weigh this risk and take it. Especially since if they get an expensive chronic rather than an acute illness, there is no pre-existing condition prohibition to keep them from signing up in a later open enrollment period as their expenses mount.