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Gladly (the cross-eyed bear) Posted Wed 23 Sep, 2009 10:19 AM |
A question that came into my head last night.
What percentage of your income is taken up by medical insurance.
Yes i realise this has no real straight forward answer , but humour me. |
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weirdmom Posted Wed 23 Sep, 2009 1:39 PM |
That is a complicated question. When we had insurance through my husband's small company the monthly premium was about 10-15% of our monthly income. Now that he works for a huge company (what I refer to as "The Man") we pay a teensy tiny premium. He also makes more money which makes the percentages more difficult to compare but it's now like 2%.
The more telling part is how much does someone have to shell out when they have a claim. Our medical bills vary so much. Two summers ago we all got bronchitis and had to go to the doctor 11 times in about 5 weeks. Just on Dr. co-pays we spent $220! And then all the medication was at least another $100.
Another good example is my jaw surgery. I've known I needed this for years so I looked into my coverage on our old crappy plan and had we still had our old plan when I had the surgery we would have paid $15,000 minimum. On our Cadillac plan we paid $150. I felt like I had won the lottery. (The total cost of my surgery was around $60,000)
And by the way I had to pay for my braces out of pocket so we were already out about $12,000 for those. This makes me even more grateful my surgery was covered so well. (Don't freak out, normal people braces are about $5,000 but given the complexity of my case it ups the cost)
I love that my husband works for The Man.
Funny video |
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goosey_84 Posted Wed 23 Sep, 2009 3:10 PM |
| It's true, it's complicated. I too work for The Man so only a very small percentage of my pay goes towards my health insurance. I went last week for an annual physical though and the copay was $20 so i can only imagine how that adds up quickly Anne. Other than that though i've had no beef with my ins. BUT last week my mom was trying to fill a prescription from a doctor for nausea since she had just gone through what can best be likened to as chemotherapy and since this particular medicine was not covered by the insurance co the pharmacy inquired if she had $500 for seven days worth. We passed. Hello generic!! |
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SamuraiSandy Posted Wed 23 Sep, 2009 3:37 PM |
My insurance is completely different. Most people who get insurance throught work are on a group plan. Since I'm the only employee getting insurance from work (tiny, tiny company), there is no group insurance. My boss is just really cool, and agreed to provide my insurance.
So, the total cost of the insurance started out being only 5% of my income, but in the past 2 years, it's gotten to be 10-11% of my income--but that's paid by work. I pay a tiny bit of that, less than 1%. Of course, mine is a rare case. Not too many small businesses like this will provide insurance to just one employee. (I'm just really cool :D )This, however has a huge downside, that is a really high deductible. I don't go to the doctor enought times in a year to meet the deductible, so I pay a lot out of pocket that way.
I have a feeling this didn't help you much. |
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Turtleneck Posted Wed 23 Sep, 2009 3:53 PM |
My husband works for a very small company (2 owners, 3 employees). The health insurance offered was so expensive as to be ridiculous.
Our self-paid coverage (Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a supposedly non-profit company) just went up 40%. That's probably going to be about 20% of our income.
Keep in mind, our insurance does not cover office visits, so we still have to pay 100% of a doctor visit which are typically about $120 each time. We have a co-pay for prescriptions, sometimes it doesn't cover prescriptions at all (like cough medicine with codeine). We have to pay our own dental and optical, also.
We pay and pay and pay. The only good our insurance does us is if one of us had to go to the hospital. It paid for our kids' ear tubes, for instance. It paid for the expenses of their births. It pays for lab tests. That's about it.
Medical costs are our biggest expense. Our insurance bill alone is now twice as much as what our car payment was (luckily we have it paid off now).
Anne, great video. My favorite line is that insurance companies need to make big profits so they can afford to provide health insurance for their employees. |
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weirdmom Posted Wed 23 Sep, 2009 4:55 PM |
This is really the biggest problem with insurance - often the more you pay, the worse your coverage is. I know plenty of single people who just gamble and save up what they would pay for a premium (say $500/month) so if they have an accident they'll have money.
I don't have any option of getting insurance through my job.
When the rubber bands pulled a muscle in my face after my surgery the dr. prescribed muscle relaxers. Insurance wouldn't cover the generic version at the dosage he prescribed so I had wait another day to get a new prescription at a dosage they would cover. And then I just had to take a pill and a half instead of one. It was just so stupid.
And once I had to get a suspicious lump removed and the coverage for the surgery was decent but apparently the lab they sent it to wasn't an approved one so we had to pay the entire lab bill. We tried to fuss and say where they sent it was out of our control and the insurance said we should check that. Oh OK.
I like in the video when he says "Why Obama WHY?" and also just how insurance companies help us not be so selfish.
Truthfully right now I have a huge crush on my insurance plan. But I still recognize the system is completely wacked.
I'm trying to find an online version of an interesting article I read in Newsweek that talks about other countries' plans. No luck yet. It was in last week's magazine. |
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Turtleneck Posted Wed 23 Sep, 2009 5:20 PM |
A lot of countries complain about their high taxes, but I wonder when all is said and done, who has more money left over? We have lower taxes, but we have to pay out of pocket for so many things.
We've got to look into some other cost cutting options for our medical expenses. Maybe get a medical savings plan or whatever they call it where they take pre-tax money for medical stuff. Coughing up another $175 a month for this premium increase is not cool. |
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Meridith Posted Wed 23 Sep, 2009 11:48 PM |
| We have insurance through my husband's work. We are really lucky. It's great coverage and the percentage we pay is low. We pay a $20 co-pay when we see the doctor and $5 for prescriptions. |
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hennypenny Posted Thu 24 Sep, 2009 3:04 AM |
| I have a fairly good insurance plan through my work. I have a $35 co-pay for any office visits and I if I need any medication, it usually doesn't cost too much. About $60 comes out of my paycheck every month for my medical and dental insurance. Also, I'm not married and do not have any kids or else it would probably be twice as much as that. I was lucky that when I had to get braces and have oral surgery I was still a minor and I was covered under my dad's insurance. My biggest medical cost since is a back injury I had about 5 years ago and it was only around $100. I feel very lucky that I have no major health problems at this moment. |
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SamuraiSandy Posted Thu 24 Sep, 2009 4:39 PM |
I think it's not only the insurance companies, it's also doctors and hospitals too. AND what makes it really complicated are the contracts that the providers have with the insurance companies. There's all sorts of re-pricing. It's all so backwards to me!
For instance, when my providers thought I didn't have insurance, they were going to charge $600+ for lab work. They forgot to check that I did have insurance. So when they did file it, they repriced it, so that the bill was less than half that amount. Isn't it backwards that if you can't afford insurance, your bill would be higher?
So, the insurance companies would be paying less to the providers, while they charge you higher insurance premiums. I just think that all of it is getting out of hand...providers and insurance companies. Okay, so most of this is just my thinking out loud, and I'm sure I don't understand it all, but something needs to be changed. |
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Turtleneck Posted Thu 24 Sep, 2009 4:45 PM |
I know what you mean, Sandy. I've also had the opposite happen.
Once, my son was going to be having procedure done and the doctor prescribed a single dose of Valium for him. My insurance rejected it and they were going to charge me $9 for one pill. When they billed it without getting insurance involved, the same pill was 18¢. So tell me that isn't insane! They would have billed the insurance company over 800% the actual cost of the pill? |
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SamuraiSandy Posted Thu 24 Sep, 2009 4:54 PM |
See, that is so crazy to me--it's so inconsistent!
By the way, Gladly...why were you asking about this? |
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Peewee Posted Fri 25 Sep, 2009 4:02 PM |
Sorry Americans but that sounds awful!
Happy Days for NHS!!! We really can't complain :) |
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AbsGinger Posted Fri 25 Sep, 2009 5:17 PM |
Peewee wrote: Sorry Americans but that sounds awful!
Happy Days for NHS!!! We really can't complain :)
The french Sécurité Sociale is much better than the NHS. |
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Posts: 2291 |
Gladly (the cross-eyed bear) Posted Tue 29 Sep, 2009 3:37 PM |
SamuraiSandy wrote: See, that is so crazy to me--it's so inconsistent!
By the way, Gladly...why were you asking about this?
Yeah sorry , i meant to follow this up. So the insurance system is their to soften the blow in some ways but by the looks of it not a lot.
Which brings me to my second question :
What would the proposed changes to the system mean to you? would things change much?
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