That's terrible insurance coverage, but now with the mandate they'll have to do better to keep customers.
If you paid $400 a month, that's $4800 a year. So the year you had **** hurt, you would have paid $18,800 without insurance. You paid $12K of what they didn't cover, so 16.8, still less than without.
Still a crappy plan you had, no doubt, but still less than what you would pay without.
Heck, I have $40 co-pays for doctors visits, and my primary doctor sucks down here. Wait an hour just to have her look up symptoms on her computer and guess what's wrong. If she's wrong, which has happened a couple times, oh well come back in a couple weeks while you still deal with what's wrong, pay more money, buy more medicine. It's a joke, but I'm in an area where it seems almost everyone complains about their doctors. The good ones are flooded with patients, and there aren't a lot of good ones because this is not a high income area.
The biggest problem though is cost. Cost of plans, cost of equipment, medicine, services, etc. Private companies were jacking the prices up because they could get away with it. Now they won't have that option, because they'll have to maintain status as the preferable option to the tax. It, along with the patient bill of rights, are good ways to keep things in check. I have my own insurance, so I'm also not worried about paying a tax. However, if the tax means my cost lowers or coverage improves as a method to keep me as a customer rather than risk losing me to the tax alternative, and at the same time millions are now insured, then it's a win in my book.
I prefer private industry be left to do it's thing, but when an industry takes advantage of it's customers to an absurd point like those companies did, then I believe the gov't should step in as a regulator. If the system was good in the first place and accessible to all, instead of being run like a damn scam as it was, then none of this would have even been necessary. The companies took advantage of a needed service, and this is the price being paid.