Personally, I don't consider non-silver plans anymore. 94 and 87 silvers is where the real value is at, as far as I'm concerned. I just filter plans accordingly and don't even see the rest.
My experience has been the opposite (maybe my advanced age perhaps?). When I look at the cost comparisons I find that the extra premium for the silver vs bronze plans more or less pays for the difference in Max out of pocket costs.. Except with the Bronze you might not spend that much on Healthcare. we are pretty healthy so rarely need medical care.. broken wrist+ surgery in 2019 notwithstanding.
Add to that (in our area at least) you have to go Bronze if you want to reduce your income with an HSA which is worth it to avoid our lovely Oregon State income tax.
Are you sure you're looking at silver plans with CSRs? If I recall correctly, you have a fairly "high" income for a pair of retirees, which is likely the reason. If you put anything above 250% FPL you just won't see any of them.
I assumed that the CSR's showed up in the costs of the plan when I put my info in? I.e the plan will be this much per month and your deductible/max OOP will be... Are the CSR's hidden somewhere??
in 2020 we had a MAGI of 162% and in 2019 we had 200% (by maxing out our HSA's)
I found that we could have the Bronze plan for about $10/m with $7k deductible/max OOP.
From memory the silver plan ran about $200/month with a max OOP of around $5k.. So clearly the Bronze plan was a better deal (I am assuming our MAGI would be the same in the above examples)
This year we have already pulled out some spending money so going Silver would prevent us from using an HSA. None of the plans around here had silvers that were "high deductible".
It should be quoted in the plan details when you shop for a plan, as long as the income you put into the tool meets the criteria.
I'm looking at plans with
Kaiser Permanente here in Washington.
The HSA bronze plan has a $6,050 individual deductible and $6,900 out-of-pocket max. There's 40% coinsurance on everything after deductible so you hit the out-of-pocket max after $8,175 of medical bills.
Their "flex silver" plan for higher-income people has a $1,800 individual deductible, $7,900 out-of-pocket maximum, and 30% coinsurance. The out-of-pocket maximum is higher than with the HSA plan (kinda weird), but you need to rack up $22k of medical bills to get there.
The 87% CSR version of their "flex silver" plan has a $600 deductible, $2,950 out-of-pocket maximum, and 10% coinsurance. Not only is the out-of-pocket max less than half of what the bronze plan has, but you have to use $24,100 worth of medical services to get there.
Of course the silver plan does come with a higher premium. The older you are, the bigger the difference will be, and in many cases the bronze plan will actually be free because it costs less than the subsidy. Now that the subsidies are higher with the new law, the silver plan will look like a better deal in more cases than it did before. The bronze plan will still be free but the silver plan will be cheaper.