Health Insurace

[Connie]

This is a great video and then I'd like to rant.

Oh, now I can't get the link. It's Mike Rogers explaining how bad the health care reform bill is and it really hit home. If anybody can find it on youtube, I'd love you to see it.

This is what got me going on this. My daughter is loosing her health care at the end of the month.

Cobra wants 420.00 a month to continue what she has had.

How can she afford this when she's unemployed? Where can we get affordable health care when the deductible on most plans are over 5000.00 a month??

Any suggestions?

I can't believe the link that I have doesn't work anymore.

[Connie]

Here's the link....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G44NCvNDLfc

By the way, our insurance just went up 200%. Husband use to work for Verizon.

Anybody that thinks they can retire with great insurance is really really hoping, at the least.

[XOXO]

Connie it is SO hard. I have family in similar situations. I really wanted health care reform. I am not sure about Obamacare but I also do not want anyone in your daughter's situation either.

Is your daughter young? Healthy? We have one employee who gets BCBS for under $100 per month. You can check into it. He is 28.

When my husband and I were first married we got "catastrophic" coverage. For all the small stuff we had to cover it and only had coverage if anything horrible happened. Luckily, it did not. We aren't the type to go to the DR for a cold or itchy skin. We did have to pay for both of our kids when they were born.

I think I have mentioned here how much cheaper it was for us to have our kids than our friends. We were uncovered and they had good insurance. It was the same month and the same hospital. Have our oldest son cost us just over half of what it cost them. I appreciate that they were kind to us but it makes me wonder--were the good to us or do they normally over charge insurance companies??

Anyway, check into BCBS or a high deductible. Ours was $5000 I think. I really recommend the high deductible if she is healthy.

GG

[Joppa]

I could go on and on about this and insurance companies in general. I have no idea how to get affordable insurance, I don't think it exists. Even if it starts out affordable, if you use it,the cost will go up, especially if you develop a chronic illness. The insurance companies have more lobbiest in DC then any other industry or group. I don't expect great things from Health Care Reform.
Good Luck and Good Health to your daughter.

[XOXO]

I could go on and on about this and insurance companies in general. I have no idea how to get affordable insurance, I don't think it exists. Even if it starts out affordable, if you use it,the cost will go up, especially if you develop a chronic illness. The insurance companies have more lobbiest in DC then any other industry or group. I don't expect great things from Health Care Reform.
Good Luck and Good Health to your daughter.

You are right Joppa. I was really looking forward to reform for Insurance COMPANIES but I am afraid that is not a part of what we are being "sold".

GG

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[Carolyn]

I think in NJ, if you are a full time student and under 25y/o, you can be on the parents policy.

Sorry to say that was not true for either of our over 21 year old sons. My husband is Federal BCBS and promptly at 21 years of age each of them were dropped even tho they were full time students. We opted to purchase policies from the colleges/universities they attended. One went thru a period of time after graduation until he got that first full time job where he pieced together insurance. Our second son just turned 24, is in grad school, and once again buying thru his university.

[djmom]

Are there any high deductible options? That would cover her if something horrible happens-

That is a great option for young and healthy.

[Connie]

So, even if she is able to get "basic insurace" at say....100-150 a month, she has a deductible of 5000.00, isn't that like paying over 6000.00 a year?

Also, with Verizon pitching in and paying their part and with raising our contribution by 200%, our insurance now costs $18,000 a year. Isn't that great?

I think is robbery and I know alot of other people are in the same situation.

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[djmom]

Connie, it really isn't $6000 a year, unless something goes wrong with her health.

If she is pretty healthy and only goes to the doctor a couple times a year, then it would be the monthly fee plus the actual doctor visits. So say there were a couple, it might be a few more hundred dollars. The plan will probably also give her the in-network discount.

So if she is planning on getting work and just needs something to tide her over and protect from catastrophic illness, it might be perfect.

For example, she could hold off on any annual physicals, etc...if she is planning on getting work soon, so she would only have an expense if she is sick.

But the insurance would be there if something bad happened.

It (high deductible) might not be a good choice if she has a moderate amount of medical problems.

You might need to sit down and review her medical expenses for last year, and do the math to see which is best for her.

[XOXO]

So, even if she is able to get "basic insurace" at say....100-150 a month, she has a deductible of 5000.00, isn't that like paying over 6000.00 a year?

Connie, like DJ's Mom said; not if she doesn't use it. If she is young what does she go to the doctor for? We hardly go because we are healthy. With our family of 4 we don't even come close to $5000.

We got our insurance with a high deductible from Farm Bureau. I am tempted to do that again.

I was really disappointed with the republican's proposal for health insurance. I thought they would do better than that. I don't like what the democrats have put forward either. I really think it is the insurance companies that need reform.


GG

[pipanale]

I don't have much of a point here, but I'll add a few cents and then run away. Also...for the next 3 weeks or so, I kinda work on the periphery of the insurance business, so I may not be entirely un-biased

The companies are in it to make $$. They're real businesses. They really barely care about your health; just that they bring in more than they dole out.

Americans are, as a nation, becoming more and more unhealthy. that = risk. risk = more spend on insurance premiums.

Americans, as a nation, are getting older. All you Baby boomers are going to spend a boatload on healthcare and drugs over the next 20-30 years.

So...as I see it, as long as the companies are for-profit, it's going to be hard to have a lot of reform. Would you want to cover the roughly 50% of the country who is overweight and unhealthy? And, if you chose to insure them, would you not make sure to charge the bejesus out of the healthy ones to cover your backside?

Am I saying I want a govt-owned plan? Not necessarily. Socialized medicine scares me for a number of reasons.

Until then...it's very hard. I can not imagine what it must be like to have to find coverage. But...you can shop the hell out of it and look for whatever you really need.

[alw1977]

Connie - it just depends on what your daughter needs. If you are talking about "well care," so she can go to the doctor for physicals, minor illnesses, stitches, etc... that is hard to find without a high deductible.

However, I think even young, healthy people are wise to have a high-deductible policy that covers them against catastrophic events. What if she gets H1N1 and god forbid has to be hospitalized for several weeks? Isn't $6200 out-of-pocket better than $40,000? I have a friend who was in a bad car accident when he was 28. He was uninsured and his medical bills reached around $100K. Yes, you can always "settle" with your hospital to pay less, but many people have to file bankruptcy because the bills get too high.

It's just something to think about. I agree that there are no great options for "well care," but there is catastrophic coverage out there. If your daughter opts for a policy, I'd advise going through a well-known company, checking the lifetime maximum and also checking coverage for accidents/illnesses - is it 80/20, 100% or what?

[soxfan22]

But...you can shop the hell out of it and look for whatever you really need.

Except that, you can't. You really can only "shop" the few options you happen to have in your given state. In Connecticut, I believe we have about 7 or 8 carrier options...And then there are of course, plans within the plans.

But the only way to create true competition is to allow us to purchase insurance across state lines. Then, intead of having 8-10 companies "bidding" for your business, you have 800-1000 or more.

Pelosi has been saying her plan "adds competition to the marketplace". Really? When was the last time government added true competition to anything?

You can't pit a public entity (gvt healthcare) against a private entity (private insurance companies) when one is responsible to shareholders, and the other is responsible to, well, nothing (see: social security). The market will be undercut, and those private entities will be lost forever. Well, you can do that...If that is your goal all along, which I suspect it is.

And you can use the mail delivery system as your arguement as Obama did so famously last summer in New Hampshire. But you have to acknowledge that the federal government does not allow first-class mail to be delivered to mailboxes by anyone other than the US Postal Service. If that law went away tomorrow, US Postal would close its doors within a week.

We are in a battle right now of extreme ideologies...The left wants to assume total control of our lives (tyranny) through public policy, and the right (not republicans, but the right) wants to allow the free market to rule the day (liberty), and thus, empowering individuals rather than beaurocracy. But you have to allow the free market to work for itself.