I have fabulous medical insurance. Ridiculously great benefits. We’ve chatted with our neighbors and friends and our benefits are superior in price and coverage. Pretty much everything covered. I have 24 chirovisit, vision and dental basic coverage, we pay extra for more coverage $7/month for vision and dental! If we have a baby it’s $0 to bring the baby home.
My DH pays for us both $100/month for vision/medical/dental premiums. I got glasses and contacts last year and this year I get it again to explain our benefits. I’ve broken a foot, ACL, etc this year alone. I’ve never paid for a single thing than office $10 copay. I didn’t pay for either knee brace or foot cast or crutches.
I admit I’m spoiled by our medical insurance. At my DH’s last place we paid $0 copay to boot. And it was even cheaper monthly, but it’s likely gone up because of rising costs. It costs according to the benefits statement we get from the company $24k/year for the company to pay for our premiums. I am sure we’d be screwed if we moved to a socialized system or had to pay taxes on our benefits. I’m not even sure we could afford to buy this type of coverage.
But do you like your employer provided coverage? Do you feel it’s contributes to you staying with your company? Does it add significant value to your salary? For us it really does.
22 responses so far ↓
1 R. May // Jul 9, 2009 at 9:40 am
I do – sort of. I have very good coverage, esp compared to what so many Americans have (or don’t). But I’ve worked her for over 8 years – every year it gets a little worse. A few more things they don’t pay for, messing with the prescription copays, blah blah blah. My favorite change from this year was intead of a $25 copay for ER it’s now $100 – but waived if admitter. Your hospital copay – $100.00. So what your saying is it’s $100.00? Just made me laugh.
Anyway – supposedly this year the ins co. said costs went up 18%. ‘Scuse me? Nothing inflates 18% in a year. And said ins company is one of the majors with giganto profits.
2 CentsInTheCity // Jul 9, 2009 at 10:13 am
Mine is not very good, but thankfully I haven’t had to utilize it too much. My company doesn’t make me pay a dime for it, so in the long run I haven’t spent too much. What kills me is we don’t have vision and I’ve had bad eyesight since the 2nd grade. Thankfully I can make my contacts last. The one thing I do like is the gym reimbursement…up to $400 per year! I think we’re changing plans next year, I’m trying to get everything done to qualify early.
3 Melissa // Jul 9, 2009 at 10:33 am
My company covers my health, dental and vision entirely with a $250 deductible. No copays on physicals and other annual care (OB-GYN, etc.) Otherwise $10.
The health care certainly contributes to me staying with my company. A move would need to come with a very significant pay increase just to justify the increased insurance costs over the life of the new job.
4 LAL // Jul 9, 2009 at 10:34 am
Weird on the hospital copay. I think mine is $10.
Cents do you use Costco for contacts?
5 dogatemyfinances // Jul 9, 2009 at 10:38 am
Show off. This is definitely one of the ways the man keeps you working for him, eh?
6 LAL // Jul 9, 2009 at 10:40 am
100% of the reason in the US it’s hard to start your own business. Giving up your employer provided insurance.
7 Jen // Jul 9, 2009 at 11:26 am
The health insurance from my job is pretty terrible, so I don’t have it anymore. But people are always stressing about it and how expensive it is and how much it doesn’t cover. Plus it has a penalty of $100 a month if you insure someone who has access to insurance. INSANE. So I am on my husband’s insurance through his union, so it is totally free. We haven’t really used it much but I’ve heard that it is fine.
My mom worked in a hospital so growing up I had AWESOME insurance. Didn’t realize that until I got my own and saw how pathetic it was.
8 Meg // Jul 9, 2009 at 1:09 pm
My employer coverage is fantastic as well – it definitely makes me appreciate my job and is a significant factor in my compensation package.
I pay $85 a month for full health and dental (dental is $12 of that). I’ve never had any problems with it and one of my coworkers who has breast cancer says the ins company has been great (which is nice to know, since you never know how good your plan is until you need it).
Mine is a “consumer driven” plan so there is no deductible and no copays and I don’t even pay for my monthly perscriptions. I get a “well visit” each year to my primary care physician and my OBGYN.
However once I use up my $1000 (not sure the exact amount) on extras like prescriptions, ER visits, and sick Dr visits, then there is a “bridge” that I have to pay based on my salary – I think mine is $1,750. And then after that the insurance company covers 100%.
Basically they give you a certain amount for free first – instead of making you pay a deductible first – so that you’re incented to keep your medical costs lower.
9 amy // Jul 9, 2009 at 1:29 pm
My husband and I have great medical coverage (we’re both government employees). It is definitely one of the reasons I stay at my job.
10 Meg from FruWiki // Jul 9, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Wow, I thought ours was alright, but listening to y’all I think ours is $$$. It did cover most of my breast reduction, so that’s a plus. But our copays are $25-$50 for doctor visits and our deductible is $2000 (then we pay 20% after that). For prescriptions, it can be $10-$50 or even more for copays.
We’ve ended up paying more than we expected after several procedures, though I don’t know who to blame — the insurance, or hospital, or both. For one procedure, first it was an extra $700 the day before we weren’t expecting, then another bill for $900 after! I guess the procedure just cost more than they originally estimated — even though it went even smoother than expected. For another, it was $400 because they switched docs on me without asking and the new guy was out of network.
11 R. May // Jul 9, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I think the whole industry is screwy. For example I was on a medication in the top tier (ahemm $35.00 a month). Except I had to take 30 mg per day – the biggest pill made was a 20 mg. So the insurance company decided that they would pay only for 30 20 mg pills because thats the max dosage…I had to pay the rest out of pocket for a grand total of $85.00 a month. How is it that the ins company and not the doctor can determine my appropriate dosage?
I think there’s some good companies out there and I think there’s some that will try every trick in the book.
For comparison sake:
I pay 51.13/biweekly for parent/child health coverage – this includes prescrips but no dental or vision. My employers share is 289.31/biweekly. So it comes out to the ins company getting $4425.72 each for me and my daughter a year.
I have separate dental (which is fabulous!) for which I pay $23.14/biweekly and employer pays $2.31 (don’t ask – they used to pay nothing). So again yearly the ins co gets 330.85/ea for me and my kiddo. This ins covers all cleanings and xray, 80% of most everything else, 50% of major work. They will pay out a max of 2500.00/year each. Which is considerably more then I pay in.
As far as working for the man vs self employed – there’s trade off plain and simple. I have excellent benefits (gvnt work) – but I don’t make as much money as private sector – and certainly not as much as I could if self-employed.
But I LIKE what I do and I like not working for profit and I’m not interested in accumulating what – just having a comfortable retirement. So working for the man works for me.
Everyone just needs figure for themselves what works for them cash vs benefits?
12 Lynn // Jul 9, 2009 at 5:08 pm
My husband works for a very large company in the healthcare industry so we have great health insurance too. It has changed recently from a plan with co-pays to a plan with deductibles so its hard to say which is better. With the old plan, I did IVF and had twins and it cost us nothing out of pocket for the IVF and $400 for the c-section/5 day hospital stay. It was pretty incredible (total of all those bills was about 25K – 13K for the IVF and 12K for the birth). Now we have a 1K deductible that the company pays and then we are on a 80/20 plan up to a maximum of 5K out of pocket. All well visits are paid for and we only pay for sick visits. Our family plan costs us 2K a year so even if something catastrophic happens the max we would have to pay including our premiums would be 6K. This year we have only paid $45 out of pocket with a couple of sick visits for the girls. Other than that, everything else has been paid for.
I find it hard to believe that your health care costs the company 25K for just a couple and they can still afford to pay it. Is that just the premiums or all the procedures you have had too? That would be about 50K per family since it is usually approx. 2x the rate of a couple. My family business pays about $6500/year for a couple and about 14K per family and even at the rate it is hard to give everyone health care. We just had to switch companies because our previous plan had an increase of 22% for the premiums and we could definitely not afford that. The new plan may be a little more expensive for the employees (higher c0-pays) but we couldn’t afford to absorb the increase anymore.
13 LAL // Jul 9, 2009 at 6:09 pm
It includes IVF treatments and stuff like that. It covers prescriptions. Also the $25k includes life insurance, disability, etc. It’s a comprehensive thing.
I can’t believe it’s so expensive either! I can’t complain because if we had to pay taxes on it and then buy all these coverages it would be outrageous!
14 Melani // Jul 9, 2009 at 11:25 pm
My husband works for a VERY large company that actually gets a lot of bad press for their insurance coverage. It surprises me though because I think our coverage is pretty good. We pay $60 a month for our entire family for health/dental. All Rx’s are $4-I’m on 5 different medications which would cost me well over $300 a month if I had to pay them myself. They cover well visits/immunizations plus the first $350 for each person. After that we have a deductible but only once have we gone over that amount.
Government health care would be a disaster in my opinion. Not that anyone has asked me.
15 R. May // Jul 10, 2009 at 9:13 am
I imagine that the heathcare companies would provide better coverage for their own employees then everyone else.
If they have a bad reputation – there’s probably a reason for it.
16 Looby // Jul 11, 2009 at 7:32 pm
I’ve always had awesome health insurance- I’ve got a chronic medical condition that is currently causing me some issues; I’ve seen a GI specialist, a rheumatologist, had x-rays, a bone scan, an MRI and physio treatment. $0 out of pocket.
I also have only 20% copay on dental, vision and massage therapy.
I live in Canada- don’t fear socialised medicine.
17 LAL // Jul 13, 2009 at 7:25 am
The thing is in the US, the premiums are skyrocketing up. And people are paying more and more out of pocket even with insurance. What is the point then? Might as well go ala carte insurance.
18 alicia // Jul 17, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I find it really odd that everyone here said they were content with their health insurance. Granted all is not perfect, but reading, I see it’s good.
In fact, the statistics just came out that 95% of Americans like their health insurance. And that 49 million people who the politicians said weren’t covered turns out to be 29 million of them are illegals and 12 million of those without health insurance earn around $75K per year and just don’t want health insurance. Period. Actual numbers of uninsured people is now calculated at only 8 million people.
So why should 300 million American citizens have to give up their health care and be forced to be downgraded to government health care ?????
( in 5 years it will be against the law to have an employer provide health care under Obama new plan….it’s on page 16)
Everybody should call or write their senator and congressperson and demand they vote no on Obama’s health paln. The reason why nothing has been done in 50 years is because when you get right down to it, America has the best health care in the world. Granted it’s not perfect, has flaws and can use some fine tuning but a government only medical insurance program is NOT the answer.
You’re been forewarned.
19 LAL // Jul 23, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Because Alicia, if one of us loses our job and our coverage, we may not like what happens next. 95% of Americans were content. With high unemployement, I wonder what the statistic would be now?
20 PW // Jul 24, 2009 at 10:11 am
LAL/Alicia, there are some things with current medical insurance that needs “corrections” and one of them you mentioned is loosing your job & insurance. Currently the new Obama State Continuation/COBRA laws cover you, for a time, but then what? This is what needs to be addressed, as well as the Federal and State Mandates that drive premiums up. And the huge $ we pay for illegal aliens. But you don’t have to dismantle an entire sytem because parts need to be fixed. Somehow the politicians are missing that. So you have to ask yourself, what is in it for them that they want to start all over again. Or are they so stupid they don’t get it. I mean, if you have 1 flat tire on your car, do you just take all of them off and buy new??
21 fengshui // Jul 24, 2009 at 10:20 pm
“So it comes out to the ins company getting $4425.72 each for me and my daughter a year.”
That is pretty cheap…. The average plan costs $12,000 a year. (depending upon benefit levels)
Fyi:
The average COST of medical care in this country is $7,500 PER PERSON in this country. (this figure may be more now, that was a 2007 figure). That is the average for the people who don’t use their insurance, those who abuse it, and those who use it a lot……
22 LAL // Jul 28, 2009 at 11:07 am
PW, it depends are the other 3 tires worn and ready to give out any second? If so then yes replace them all, why drive around on worn tires?
Fengshui, I believe the costs are higher for smokers and obese people, but the number of obese people and smokers doesn’t seem to be going down.
Leave a Comment