In the spring of 2019, Cory Dowd suddenly found himself without health insurance for the first time. A self-employed event planner, he had just finished a Peace Corps stint that provided health benefits, but he was still more than a year away from starting a graduate program that would provide coverage through his university.

So, like countless others in an online world, he went insurance shopping on the internet.

But the individual insurance market he was about to enter was one dramatically changed under President Donald Trump’s push to dismantle Obamacare, offering more choices at cheaper prices.

Dowd is well-educated and knew more than most about how traditional health insurance works. But even he did not understand the extent to which insurers could offer plans that looked like a great deal but were stuffed with fine print that allowed companies to deny payment for routine medical events.

Not bound by the strict coverage rules of the Affordable Care Act, the short-term plans that Dowd signed up for have been dubbed “junk insurance” by consumer advocates and health policy experts. The plans can deny coverage for people with preexisting conditions, exclude payments for common treatments and impose limits on how much is paid for care.

Dowd, like millions of other Americans who have flocked to such plans in the past three years, only saw what looked like a great deal: six-month coverage offered through an agency called Pivot Health, whose website touts the company as a “fast-growing team obsessed with helping you find the right insurance for your needs.”

Monthly premiums for the two short-term plans he bought were surprisingly cheap at around $100 a month each, with reasonable co-pays for routine doctor visits and treatments. Best of all, the first plan he bought promised to cover up to $1 million in claims, the second up to $750,000. That should more than do it, he thought. Dowd was 31 and healthy but wanted protection in case of a medical emergency. He signed up and began paying his premiums without closely reading the details.

Then he was hit with the very kind of emergency he had feared. And he wasn’t protected after all.

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