Private insurance companies still do not cover pre-existing conditions

Your story is missing some pieces. Why didn't you sign up during ACA open enrollment? Those policies absolutely do cover pre-existing conditions. But not every provider organization will be in network for every health plan.

>Private insurance companies still do not cover pre-existing conditions. How? By not writing insurance to individuals except during ACA open enrollment. Sorry I'm struggling to follow here. You think the open enrollment period effectively means that there's no prohibition on pre-existing conditions? Think you're kind of bending words outside of their normal usage because quite literally pre-existing condition policies are banned. The compensating counterbalance is a neutral open enrollment period so people don't just jump when they learn they have a health problem, it's a compromise to ensure financial sustainability. You do understand that before this, it was worse right? One comment after another here is comparing the ACA to a magical fantasy, rather than the status quo that it improved upon.

That's how it was supposed to work though? There's an open enrollment period where anyone can sign up, pre-existing conditions or not. To prevent the adverse selection problem, which is where you don't sign up for insurance until you have a condition and then cost the insurance company a lot of money, you can only sign up at that time. The thing you're trying to do - sign up for insurance to cover a specific procedure - is quite literally what the system is designed to prevent. You're supposed to have insurance all the time or none of the time. Did you try asking the clinic how much it would cost if you are uninsured and paid cash?