Tag: insurance

The Costs of Health Insurance

Post author By David
Post date October 29, 2008
7 Comments on The Costs of Health Insurance

Warning: Undefined array key "adf" in /home4/hpvcxhmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/similarity/similarity.php on line 69

Warning: Undefined array key "sim_pages" in /home4/hpvcxhmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/similarity/similarity.php on line 70

Maybe this is related to being under a dentists drill this morning, but today’s topic is the cost of health care. A story over at The Health Insurance Myth detailing how much more a visit to the eye doctor costs for insurance companies was very revealing. Add to that the fact that we are entering the Open Enrollment period at Intermountain Healthcare where I get to reassess my health insurance situation and make any changes necessary and you can see why I would be thinking about this today.

I’ve never done this before since I’ve never had a year where I was not in a new job, had just enrolled immediately prior to the Open Enrollment period, or had the company completely changing their benefits package. This year we get a mild rate increase over last year and there are a couple of new benefits available, but nothing truly drastic. Open Enrollment doesn’t mean too much to me since I don’t foresee making any significant changes, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Intermountain subtly encouraging employees to choose their High Deductible plan. There was nothing really overt about it, but while rates are increasing for all the plans they still pay the entire premium for full time employees on the HD plan and on top of that they reduced the annual out of pocket maximum by almost half so those using these plans have lower financial risk than before.

To give some perspective – their no-deductible plan costs more in premiums than the deductible of the high deductible plan – that’s before you set aside any money in a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) to cover for the copays (money that disappears if you don’t use it). The lower deductible plans cost less than the deductible on th HD plan until you factor in their deductibles and copays. For anyone who expects to pay the full deductible they can contribute their premium and FSA money to a Health Savings Account (HSA) and easily cover the out of pocket maximum. Any money they don’t spend in the HSA rolls over to the next year and earns interest. For those of us who don’t expect to even meet the full deductible we can build up an HSA that earns interest and is almost perpetually funded very quickly so that we can devote the extra cash to other needs.

All of this deals with the insurance/health care issue at a personal level, but it should illustrate the need to step outside the mindset of traditional health insurance as we try to tackle this public challenge – the last thing we need to do with this monster is limit our options at the outset. (Unfortunately Medicaid, CHIP, and UPP serve as good examples of programs where we artificially limit our options.)

Tags government, health care, HSA, insurance

culture

Funding Fire Departments

As we drove through heavy smoke that seemed to be blowing north from the fire in Draper last night, our girls started asking about firefighters and how we (as a society) support them. It got me thinking about firefighters as a service of government. Although they are every bit as legitimate and important a service as police, I rarely think about the Fire Department in relation to government.

Since my brain was chewing on the subject it apparently decided to throw me a what-if to consider. I wanted to share here to see what others thought.

Virtually every structure is insuread against fire – this means that insurance companies are highly interested in the work of firefighters. Would it make sense to privatize the fire department by having insurance companies be in charge of funding them? If so, what kinds of changes in service would you expect to see?

I’m not trying to suggest that our fire departments need to be privatized or that they should be. I just wanted to get some feedback on that random idea.

Tags children, fire department, government, insurance, money, questions, services

culture life

Insurance Racket

I had to deal with changing health insurance today with the business office at the womens clinic that Laura goes to in preparation for our new baby. That gave me the opportunity to review prices for their services. I discovered something very disappointing. In the last year, with insurance through my work, I have paid as much in premiums (not counting what the company was supposedly paying toward the premiums) as the clinic would charge an insurance company. The only money I saved by having insurance, even with the large medical expense of having a baby, is that I am not being charged the higher prices that they charge those who don’t have insurance. I don’t quite understand that policy. Why should they charge more to those people who can’t afford insurance? Isn’t that like kicking a person while they’re down?

Anyway, that’s the insurance racket. My portion of the price of insurance every year is enough to pay for a major medical procedure, like 9 months of prenatal care plus delivery and a hospital stay.If we weren’t having kids I’d be throwing away a new car every year in insurance premiums – and that’s when the company is paying the bulk of the costs. If I were to pay for that insurance myself for three years I would have paid for a major injury – like being seriously hit by a car. If I put that money into my house instead of my insurance I would have the house paid off in 11 years from the time I bought it.

Tags insurance, kids, thoughts, work