Interesting data point for my 2016 health insurance

[GummyBearz]

This is not a rant about my personal situation, as I know I have it a lot better than some people. This is a rant about the system in general. Please keep that in mind. Also note, all numbers are for the "in network prices". Out of network prices are roughly 2x.

For the last couple years I have had great health insurance mainly paid for by my company. They have low or no co-pays, an HSA credit card that my company puts $6750 into for free every year (I can put money into it before taxes, but never needed to), they pay for my wife's birth control even though she opts for a more expensive alternative to "the pill", and the list goes on.

This amazing health care plan just got its rates increased to the point where they company can no long afford to offer it in 2016. At this point I want to stress the fact that my company is small (~50 employees), treats us all incredibly well, is very profitable, and wanted to keep the old plan by any means possible. In fact our amazing dental plan is staying as is, and actually got cheaper by $20/month. The new plans being offered are a bronze, silver, gold type plan. No more HSA, the gold plan has $5 co-pays, silver has $10, bronze $15-$25 depending on situations. For a large amount procedure's they also require a "co-insurance" of 20-35%... something I have never even heard of before. Deductibles in the ~$7,000-$13,000 range, which is higher than it used to be, a cost that goes up with age and with number of family members covered over 2 (ok, that makes sense).

And after all those co-pays, co-insurance %s, a healthy 33 year old ends up paying $150-$200 per month. That's not bad. What is bad is I got a look at how much the company is subsidizing me. If you add that number that into the total, a healthy 33 year old costs $700-$1000 PER MONTH for a plan that includes out of pocket fees at every damn turn of the road.

And my dental insurance went down........... what the fuck

[ViseGrip]

1. Our company was silver with 6K hospitial copay, and policy cost 7-8K a year for both of us.

Sounds like you've had it good for years! What you have now, is what we had to have for years. She is just under 50 so she could drop the coverage altogether, as it was too expensive for the owner as well.

Everyone had to go to the ACA and we find it more affordable, with better out of pocket costs, for the same coverage.

[GummyBearz]

2. The sounds similar

The 7-8K number is close to the $700/month number. But if I was ~50 years old it would be quite a bit higher.

[world wide wally]

3. Bernie needs to do a better job of explaining single payer than he did at the last debate

Everyone complains about the higher taxes, but they never mention the cost of paying private insurance being eliminated from that. Bernie is guilty of the same thing.
When I was taking teaching classes, one instructor advised me to assume the students know NOTHING. I have found this to be true of pretty much everyone.