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My health insurance (which is cheap since I am too young to get anything yet) was about $20 a month when I started working 4 years ago... currently its at $27 a month now... that's $7 increase in about 4 years which averages to be about $2 a year increase or 10%... 10% "seems" like a big increase but $2 is hardly a big increase.... the most expensive plan is about $135 a month and include really low deductibles/co-pays (as well as vision and dental)... the most expensive "family" plan is about $365 a month (includes vision and dental)... so I figure the "family deal" with health/vision/dental costs about $4380.... well, that's with my company anyways... doesn't really seem that expensive when the average family makes almost 60k a year... my car insurance (which is also the cheapest plan) is about $280 for a year...
My wife's coverage was cheap like that too - until you read the fine print and realized that the coverage was horrendous. Just like your "cheapest plan" car insurance.
My wife's coverage was cheap like that too - until you read the fine print and realized that the coverage was horrendous. Just like your "cheapest plan" car insurance.
Sounds like your wife and mine work for the same employer.
Sounds like your wife and mine work for the same employer.
True story - before we were married she had an operation. Total cost was around $9k and her share was around $300 (still high but within reason I suppose). A few weeks after the surgery the HR manager sent out an email saying they had "shopped around" and reduced their healthcare costs by several cents. Yes as in $0.0X. She was proud of that fact in the email and made a note saying "while everyone else's costs are going up".
Reading the fine print, that operation my wife had would've been almost $2k out of pocket on the "new and improved cheaper plan".
The same thing happened with our employer sponsored insurance. The company switched providers to reduce premiums and the new plan is horrible. The plan supposedly pays 100% for annual physicals after $25 copay, but, the EOB for my physical this year disallowed almost $200 of the bill. It's a PPO plan and I went to a network provider, so, I thought I was covered-WRONG! They always find a way to avoid paying. The reason for my share being so high was; too many procedures billed for a single visit. WTF! I'm over 50, I had a physical exam, EKG, blood panel and chest xray. I'm still trying to figure which procedure pushed me over the limit. I hate dealing with health insurance companies. The benefits booklets are really misleading-the coverages look good in print, but, never work that way in reality.
The same thing happened with our employer sponsored insurance. The company switched providers to reduce premiums and the new plan is horrible. The plan supposedly pays 100% for annual physicals after $25 copay, but, the EOB for my physical this year disallowed almost $200 of the bill. It's a PPO plan and I went to a network provider, so, I thought I was covered-WRONG! They always find a way to avoid paying. The reason for my share being so high was; too many procedures billed for a single visit. WTF! I'm over 50, I had a physical exam, EKG, blood panel and chest xray. I'm still trying to figure which procedure pushed me over the limit. I hate dealing with health insurance companies. The benefits booklets are really misleading-the coverages look good in print, but, never work that way in reality.
If you have not already you should appeal this claim. The broker for my old job's insurance coverage said that they often make mistakes on the level of coverage because they differ from one employer to the next.
I guess I'm one of the 'lucky' few for which health insurance benefits greatly. I have a genetic disorder and my medication alone (it's administered intravenously, so this doesn't include the nurses, equipment etc) is $65000 a month. So even if I was paying $1000 a month, I'd still be getting an amazing deal.
I do have a quick question though... since I do have this, and I'm on a group plan with my job (which is amazing) does the entire companies rates go up because of my disability? I'm really afraid of putting a burden on my fellow employees because of my issue
JetJockey, the answer is yes. In an employee group plan, the costs for all covered healthcare is totaled, and at the conclusion of the contract, the rates are adjusted. That $65,000 / month makes you effectively unemployable at small companies. If you were to be hired on, the group insurance would have to be dropped or modified when the contract came up for re-negotiation. In some companies, an excessive use of the insurance will get you fired, usually for a trumped up reason.
You can rest assured that the insurance companies are now mounting the attack to get major changes in Medicare. Think about it for a second - if it wasn't for the standard medicare disbursements as a guideline, consumers would not have a clue as to the actual costs involved. That would mean that insurance companies and service providers could ratchet up rates with no one being the wiser.
You can see the beginnings of the lobbying effort now, where the media reports that social security might be able to survive, but the medicare costs will be too much for the government. If our kiss-a.. Congress gets a chance, and public outrage isn't strong enough, it'll try to eliminate or scale back medicare. We just saw how it mishandled the whole banking fiasco, despite calls for sanity.
For the person paying $10,000 per year for insurance, it may be time to do some re-evaluating. With that amount of money going out, you may be able to self-insure by investing the money and using it as needed.
A friend and customer recently expressed their feelings on insurance, after having to deal with it. One of them was told by an investor in a major city "I LOVE insurance. Stop at look around at all the big buildings and consider how they got the money to build those." He then went on to say that it is the only industry where a fee can be collected on a regular basis, and when the request for the service is made it can LEGALLY be denied.
At a certain point, the cost of health insurance stops making sense. If I had put the money that I had spent (not invested) on insurance into my own healthcare instead, I'd be much healthier today.
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