Read this is you want to find out how much of a rip-off health care is.

Previously, I had a PPO that cost me $38 a paycheck (paid bi-weekly). It was a nice PPO with a lot of doctors in network. Recently, my company decided to go to what’s called a HSA (Health Savings Account) so bare with me. Not only do we still have a premium (It went up for me to $41 a paycheck) but now I have a $1500 a year deductible. This essentially means, for the first $1500, I have to pay. If I broke my leg and had a $1450 bill, no longer would I only have about $100 co-pay, I’d now be responsible for all of it. On top of my premium, my company has to pay $176 per paycheck into the plan as well. So as of now, the insurance company is making ($176+$41)*26=$5642 a year. Out-of-pocket I have to injure myself passed $5642+$1500=$7142 PER YEAR before they lose a dime. To make it even better, they charge a $6 per month maintenance fee on my HSA. So basically, on top of the $41 per paycheck I have to pay, I also have to put in until I at least can get to $1500. But the stupid marketing rep kept saying “but it comes out before your taxes, so its tax free. . . its free money. You also get interest on your HSA, which is more free money”. . . “Interest” is an incredible 0.5%, yup, that’s half a percent. So if I had $1500 in there, I would make an almost unfathomable $7.50 a year while they’re charging me $72 to let them invest my money and make profit off of it. I swear to god, if I injure myself now, I’m gonna do it right and make the biggest possible medical bill ever.

What possible benefit could it be for your company to change to this other insurance company? If they are paying in addition to you, I just don't see the logic in it.

*cough* our CEO is friends with the underwriters CEO*cough*

[This message has been edited by RandomTask (edited 12-19-2007).]

yup. this is why I cancelled my health insuance and am fully using the HSA. take that money, and put in the HSA.
if you live a normal life, and things go "normal" you will have more money. of course - if things go badly - it will have been a bad choice. why its called INSURANCE.

now, most things that can go wrong are covered by other forms of insurance. for example: I got hit by a car this summer. didnt get hurt, but went to hospital anyways - more for legal reasons. and, didnt cost me anything. THEIR auto insuance had to pay. if I claimed it on my insurance - which is how it would have worked before - I would have been responsible for the deductable, and then try and reclaim that from their auto insurance.

the more people that bail on the insurance system - the more expensive it will become for those who are left.

tho - really think about this before just jumping out. family history. habits. lifestyle. if your a flubby 40 yr old male, DONT DO IT.

but, if your a healthy person - you are throwing your money away anymore. most people use UNDER $500/year in health care. start storing up in a HSA to cover costs when they do occur. and even with a catasrophe - loans are easy to get, and STILL cheaper than insurance.

stop subsidizing the people with bad lifestyles. when them allergic, depressed, diabetic, pre-mies are the only ones left - they will finally be paying full price for their crap, not the rest of us.

This may work for most people, but when the bill comes in...look out.

My brother had brain cancer, insurance covered most of the treatments, he still passed away. About $150K in expenses (in 3 months) and would have continued to climb. Take out a loan? Who would have loaned him the money in his condition? I am not a fan of insurance costs either, but still.... the cost of medical coverage is so high that you could easily go broke trying to get healthy. BTW, this was skin cancer and no outward signs until he was acting strange and passed out and they did an MIR. You may be a healthy 40 something, but how healthy are you really? Do you know for sure? It is a gamble and if you have family, are you willing to gamble their future finances also?

J.

Pyrthian is right.

Do insurance companies make more than they should? I think so. They usually take on average about 15% out of the system. Is the value they provide worth that? I just have one opinion, but I don't think what they do is worth 15%. Maybe half that.

Even if reduced 8%, I still think you are going to consider insurance a rip-off.

So who is making out on all this money you are being ripped off? Doctors? They get 8-10 dollars of every 100 dollars spent on health care.

The REAL rip-off is as pyrthian said. You are having the cost of the knowingly unhealthy spread out into your lap. People like the melanoma metastatic to the brain? What are you going to do? It happens. Tragic. No problem spreading that cost around.

Paying for viagra for the elderly. Worth it to you to pay for? Tube feeding and dialysis for terminal patients? Horrendously expensive. Worth it to pay for? Diabetics and the exhorbitant cost to prevent the consequence of their disease? Worth it to you when if they lost 30-50 pounds they wouldn't need to be on any medicines?

A whole bunch of consequences of choice are rolling on to your lap. And the tab is just going to go up as more people are doing it.

I haven't met a poor doctor yet

quote Originally posted by frontal lobe: So who is making out on all this money you are being ripped off? Doctors? They get 8-10 dollars of every 100 dollars spent on health care.

[This message has been edited by jaskispyder (edited 12-19-2007).]

quote Originally posted by jaskispyder: I haven't met a poor doctor yet

and you shouldn't. I will NEVER advocate taking anything from the doctors. They invest HUGE dollars & time to create their career.

When I retired I opted to stay with the companies PPO BC/BS, and pay the premium plus co-pay. It started at $152/mo for single coverage in 2002. It climbed rapidly to $479 by '07. The company changed "suppliers" for insurance so that the cost for '08 would be ~$600/mo plus co-pay. I did get a letter that if I wanted to stay with BC/BS it would be $946/mo plus co-pay. Since the "company" pays a portion, they are paying less, and you the worker pays more.

I opted for a "co-insurance plan $341/mo, and I get to pay the first $1100 then 20% of everything else up to $5000/year. As you say, you can't afford to have it, and you can't afford not to have it. So I get to pay ~$5200/year up to a max of $10,200 a year for health care.

The HSA are a benefit and I wish I could have one of those ($1100 tax exempt), but being retired, I don't qualify. I pay the $1100 after taxes, which means I have to have $1300 before taxes. When I was working I had the HSA account, however the catch was, at that time, was use it or lose it, and it wasn't interest bearing at all.

The cost of medical insurance, long term health care insurance, co-pays become a tax deduction once they reach a percentage of gross income, which is easy to do. You can use the HSA funds for eye exams, eye glasses etc. Currently, I'm paying 25-30% of my income for medical expenses.

Become a welfae recipient or illegal alien and it is all free.

I thought a HSA was available to anyone? it is just basicly a savings account, for medical expenses.

.

[This message has been edited by JazzMan (edited 12-08-2008).]

quote Originally posted by jaskispyder: I haven't met a poor doctor yet

I was in residency for 3 years. I worked about 100 hours per week for 50 weeks a year. I got paid $23,000 per year. That works out to $4.60 per hour.

The AVERAGE debt for a graduating medical student is $125,000 now. That's a pretty decent house payment monthly, even if spread over a 10 year mortgage.

Pediatrics, family practice and internal medicine might start out at $120,000 to $140,000 per year. Specialists make a LOT more.

You might not have met a poor doctor yet, but you have met a lot of not-rich ones.

The vast majority of the cost run-up to rip-off level is due to the great advances that have kept people alive longer when they would have been dead, and the vast expansion of options available. I can spend A LOT of money trying to negate the damaging effects of horrible health CHOICES (not unpreventable occurences) and I am exceptional at it. That means, though, that I can probably keep expensive treatments going for literally 15 to 20 YEARS longer since the person is still alive. I'm not a big part of that cost. I can do it with 3 or 4 office visits a year, which even at $100 per visit is only $400 per year. The cost of medicines and lab tests per year is more than 10 times that.

You may choose to live way healthier. I do, too. I'm proud of you. But insurance spreads the cost of caring for those that won't over you and I and everyone else that has insurance. The brutally honest fact is that you and I get to subsidize their unhealthy behavior.

So when you complain about being ripped off, I hear you and I feel it with you. But don't look at the insurance company and don't look at your employer. Look at your neighbor.