Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All but Useless

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by No_Recess

53 pages of statists arguing over which theft scheme (usually falling in the D v. R paradigm) is better.

This forum at its finest...

And you join right in! With nothing of value to add to the subject.

Irony at it's finest.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by Odd Ball

I went to a urgent care center and only paid $75 for my services. The bill said that if I did not have insurance the cost would have been over $800. I paid the insurance approved reasonable and customary negotiated rate. The health insurance company did not pay a dime but the fact that I had insurance and got the negotiated rate saved me over $700.00.

That's good to know. Hope it's the same with every company and provider.

[golgi1]

Obamacare is expensive because it socializes in many more sick people than traditional insurance ever did.

Obamacare is an abuse of a system that was always designed to be a free market system, but it was perhaps an inevitable abuse. The problem lies with health insurance as a concept. It is socialism for the healthcare industry as a whole, not for people. It allows them to charge exorbitant fees for everything, well past what the non-socialized medical market would have ever allowed for. Imagine paying $2,000 instead of $70,000 for a surgery. This would be an illustration of the theoretical difference between non-insurance supported medical market and the current socialized, inflated market. It is also socialized support of medical school tuition that encourages insane tuition expenses; because Doctors have a chance at making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year; because the socialized insurance system provides for inflated medical fees.

That being said, as an ex-Health Insurance agent, I can tell you that people who look at the quality of their medical insurance based on the deductible are misguided. It's the opposite of what you should look for.

To illustrate, I could give you a plan that looked to have a reasonable cost, and a low deductible, and you might buy it based on no other analysis. However, that plan may very well likely be "chopped" at the top end of its benefits. Is anyone comfortable with a $70k limit on transplant surgery, for instance? I find such plans to be highly unethical to offer, but some companies offer(ed) them and people buy them because they always evaluate on price and deductible.

Health plans are primarily there to prevent financial catastrophe by covering you for the top end of costs that you might incur, not to provide you with reasonable deductibles that will never cause financial disaster in any meaningful sense. They are there so that 1. you can get that transplant surgery and 2. so that you don't incur a $50k or greater bill for non-covered fees, not so that you are comfortable with a low deductible.

I'd personally start with a plan that had good top-end coverage, then start at a $5k deductible, and move down in deductible until you find a plan that has the maximum price that you can afford. That is your plan, and it will be a plan that you can feel good about even if the deductible is as high as $5k.

Last, to reiterate, these plans aren't irrationally expensive based on nothing. They are expensive because people, or the government, or whomever, wanted plans that included more sick people in the insurance pool. That's who you are paying for.