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Question of the Day – Budgeting and Healthcare
By JLP | November 3, 2006
We just got our renewal in from my wife’s employer-sponsored health plan. Our rate is going up from $89 per pay period (24 per year) to $104 per pay period, which represents a 16.9% increase. They also raised the co-pays to $35 per doctor visit from the $25 that currently is. Granted our rate is still VERY low compared to a lot of folks, but it is still rising fast. In light of all this, here’s today’s Question of the Day:
Is it an employer-sponsored plan or an individual plan?
Topics: Budgeting, Question of the Day | 19 Comments »
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:16 am
I would love to see what other people are paying for health insurance. We are going through open enrollment right now at my company. My cost will increase from $78 per month to $82 per month. This is to cover myself (no spouse or children). Copays for visits and drugs are increasing by $5-$20.
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:31 am
My employer-sponsored plan:
-Going up from about $22 every week to $30 every week. That’s for me and my wife.
-Co-pays and everything else are staying the same. Visit co-pays are $20-30. Drug co-pays are minimal.
-Other plans aren’t going up quite as much, but I’m happy with ours and afraid to jump ship.
-I finally stopped being stupid and set up deductions to our Health Care Spending Account so I can pay miscellaneous medical costs with before-tax money.
Personally I think rising co-pays are stupid and encourage people to stay home and get sicker (and skip annual physicals). That just means insurance companies will pay more down the road when patients opt to put off doctor visits and treatments.
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:00 am
Right now I’m paying $18 a month premium for myself (age=28). It’s an HDHP/HSA plan with my employer. I won’t know how/if that will increase until December.
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:03 am
Zero. I have one of those newfangled HSA/high-deductable healthcare plans, and my employer pays the premiums. And funds the HSA too. Yeah.
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:34 am
I have an employer-sponsored plan, and my premiums are about $90 a month (automatic withdrawal each pay period). It’s not the absolute cheapest plan they had available. But since my care center is a one-stop shop HMO, I can get everything done in one place.
I also have a flexible spending account that I use for my dental visits and some prescriptions. (And and buying glasses, when I do that.)
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:52 am
I’m actually shopping for individual health insurance for our family and the one plan we are leaning towards runs $352.30 to cover the three of us (2 @ 29 years old, 1 @ 4 years old). This plan doesn’t cover office visits (or even a pregnancy!) and it’s 30% coinsurance. The deductiible is $0, so that’s nice.
There are cheaper ones out there, but the company is one we trust. I still have to do more research, though.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:07 pm
I have an employer sponsored family plan. Costs me about $67 biweekly for a PPO with no deductible. Employer pays the other 75% of the cost. Not too bad, but the copays are $20/30 for in network and negotiated fee for out of network. Open season just started so I’m reviewing my options. We need more than preventative dental coverage. Paying for my daughter’s braces is killing me!
Another thing, I hate paying the “family plan” rate when it’s only me and one child. What happened to all the single plus 1 options?
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:14 pm
We pay $30/month for a employer-sponsored plan (employer pays the first $300 of whatever plan you choose, we have a family plan). Visits are $10, prescription co-pays are $20 for a 3-month mail order supply.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Also, we pay about $15/month for dental and optical (each).
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Right now I’m paying $63/paycheck, but I think that’s going up to $72. Once I get married we’re getting the family plan which will be about $156/paycheck. This doesn’t include any dental or vision. I miss California where I paid $10/paycheck for vision, dental, and health.
I’m with Single Ma.. what happened to the +1? Although if I had a family of 5, then the family plan would be great, but right now it’s hurting.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Luckily my wife works for a local government agency so our benefit premiums are very low. I think as of the latest enrollment this fall we get health, dental and vision for the two of us right around $35 per pay.
It was an increase of about 25% from last year though.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Ours is $30/month, and it recently went down since our company started paying for spouse coverage. We have $10-$15 copays.
Our company uses a “we’ll pay $X/month for one of several health insurances and you cover any overage” strategy, so I have little doubt it will go up. The $X is calculated to be the cheapest plan in the menu.
We use Kaiser, since I hate fiddling with insurance companies and the Kaiser service in our area is quite good.
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Oh for the good ole days of employer plans! I’ve had individual insurance for 10 years, and have experienced first-hand the absolute highway robbery of our healthcare system. As if getting older each year were not enough, I get the lovely birthday notice each year from my insurance carrier with the 15% premium increases. And on milestone birthdays the premiums go up even more!
To minimize costs, I’ve maxed out the deductible ($5000) and switched to an HSA plan. Tried to switch to a lower-priced carrier but the underwriters don’t like my allergies. Current monthly premium (just me, no preventive care, no maternity, no nuthin’) is $167.
I’d rather build up my HSA for the inevitable health emergency than send it away in premiums every year. Fortunately, other than chronic (and untreated) allergy and sinus issues, I’m a very healthy person. Too bad it’s cost-prohibitive for me to go to the doctor.
Must remain calm – can’t afford a trip to the ER …
November 4th, 2006 at 1:22 am
I pay $62 a month for medical coverage, employer sponsored. I pay an extra $20 something a month for employer sponsored dental coverage too.
I’m switching to the high deductible plan for next year so I can put money in an HSA. My employer puts their savings into the HSA also. I think I’ve gone to the doctor twice in 2 years and gotten 2 generic prescriptions when I had my wisdom teeth out. Total savings for 2 years of premiums is about $132. Yeah, I’m one of those people subsidizing other people’s costs. That’s why I’m switching.
Also, costs keep going up for a lot of reasons. I’m not an expert on it, but I think that it has a lot to do with unnecessary procedures being done just because insurance covers it, which ends up costing the insurance company more, which they just pass on to the people paying the premiums. For example, my doctor wanted me to get a CT scan for some stomach pain I had because she wasn’t sure what was causing the pain. I explained to her that it could be my diet because it started around the time I started eating Balance Bars. She said it could be, but instead of saying, “Stop eating them for a couple weeks and we’ll see what happens”, it was, “Well, the pain doesn’t make sense to me because it’s not most of the normal things that cause abdominal pain, so you should get a CT scan”. Side note, it’s great to hear your doctor say I’m not sure what’s wrong with you, CT scan time! That didn’t freak me out at all. Anyways, I told her no, I’m not getting a CT scan right away. I’ll stop eating the Balance Bars and see what happens, and the pain went away. I kind of wonder why that wasn’t her suggestion and instead exposing me to costly and unnecessary radiation was a better idea.
November 4th, 2006 at 9:13 am
I have a high-deductible plan with HSA so the monthly premium is covered by my employer. Premiums for my employer’s alternative HMO plans have gone up by 30% each of the last 2 years and they have eliminated the PPO-type alternatives.
I recently had a CT scan to monitor for recurrence of cancer after I had surgery to remove a tumor on a rib earlier this year. On first evaluation, the insurance company seems to be wanting to reject the expense since it appears to be a routine procedure and therefore not covered. It seems to be risking long-term expense for short-term savings. Maybe they’re trying to encourage me to take my health expenses to a different insurance, or maybe they’ve determined that if I skip the testing to save money, any recurrence would be found at a later stage and I would die more quickly and actually save them money long-term.
November 4th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
I have a high-deductible plan with HSA through the Federal govt. (self only) I just calculated the net cost for next year (premium, less their contribution to my HSA account) and it works out to $62 for the year. Of course, the Feds pay about 2/3 of the total premium.
Two years ago, before my youngest daughter turned 22 and was dropped from coverage, I was paying about $185 every two weeks for a family plan. I’m a lot happier now.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:06 am
My monthly costs for just me in 2007:
health insurance is $58
dental is $16
flexible spending account is $180
I am one of those folks that greatly benefit from group health insurance – it would be financially crippling otherwise.
November 5th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Our health care, dental, and vision costs?
0 for the both of us.
Yep.
Microsoft Benefits rock! We pay no copay, no deductibles, no prescriptions costs.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
I pay around $38 per pay check for single coverage in a PPO employer sponsored plan. The copays are around $20. My dental is $50 deductible per year with a $1500 maximum coverage.
For me this is high coming from two jobs where I did not have to pay health insurance premium.