Anyone have high-deductible personal health insurance?

AnnapolisLari

The insurance through DHs job would be in-sane. We're going to go through Anthem for our insurance, but I am having a hard time picking a deductible level. Obviously, the higher the deductible, the lower the monthly payment.

I am trying to decide on $1500 per person, $2500 or whatever. Do you mind sharing what yours is and why you chose that level?

KoriBrett

Our D is 1500 through work - I guess the thing you'd have to think about is this - would you be able to hand over $2500 to the hospital or whoever with no notice?  Does anyone have health issues that would make up for the higher monthly $, or is everyone pretty healthy?  What's the rx coverage like, and would it be worth it for you guys to get good drug copays?

Frankly I only met my stupid deductible when I was pregnant.  Totally useless for me. 

Temp108743750006959

we each have a $1500 deductible. It is weird -- it's never one big chunk (might be a $5000 procedure but I'll get billed $300), I never understand how insurance works. Yeah, it sucks but I'd rather pay $1500 then 10k.

karen6784

Our deductible is $7500 for our family.  We are self employed and have decent coverage.  Our premium is $750 per month. 

AnnapolisLari

The plan covers 3 office visits per person, per year, with a $35 copay, and after that we are responsible for 30% of whatever the office charges. Almost all of our health care would be covered by those 3 office visits.

The deductible will come in for emergency visits, or surgeries, etc. We are all pretty healthy, and the one urgent thing we've had is my kidney stones, and that was billed at $1600-- so they would have covered $100 if we had the $1500 deductible. Yee hah.

The deductible options are $1000, $1500, $2500 or a couple higher. We could scrape up $2500 if we had to. The monthly payment on that is SO much lower that I am considering it. I suppose that we could always change it later.

eclaires

We've had a $3k deductible before, and then a family deductible of $6k (I think).

Anyway it was an HSA plan and obviously the premiums were very reasonable - it was through MH's employer so we put the cost difference between the premiums with a traditional plan and the premiums with the HSA in our HSA instead of taking home more paycheck.

The nice thing about it since it was an HSA plan was that all well baby visits and preventative care were covered.  We had to pay OOP for sick visits and prescriptions, both of which went to our deductible.  For preventative care, we paid no copay.

There were no issues with it - the nice thing was that we had $3k pretty quickly in our HSA so if there ever was a need for the money, it was there and earmarked for healthcare, which is part of why we were comfortable with a higher deductible.

Honestly, we actually prefer the HD/HSA plans just because of how we use our healthcare.  At my husband's current job, the only option is a cadillac plan, which while nice, is pricey.  Both for us - and his employer - the total per year for our family is something like $22k in premiums.  Sure, it's nice to only pay $10 to have this baby (I pay my copay once), but it's still ridiculous.  This is probably the only year, barring any health issues that we have yet to encounter, we will get anywhere near the premiums paid - just because of the c/s.

peekaboo716

KoriBrett:

Our D is 1500 through work - I guess the thing you'd have to think about is this - would you be able to hand over $2500 to the hospital or whoever with no notice?  Does anyone have health issues that would make up for the higher monthly $, or is everyone pretty healthy?  What's the rx coverage like, and would it be worth it for you guys to get good drug copays?

Frankly I only met my stupid deductible when I was pregnant.  Totally useless for me. 

Excellent advice. We compared what the cost was for the lower deductible and figured out that we would save so much more money by going to the higher deductible. The money we save offsets the increased deductible.

JOEBunny

We have it through DH's work, but our deductable ends up being about $5,000.  We have not had a year were we did not his it.  I would calculate the cost as if you hit it and see what the difference is.  Then think about the risk you would or would not hit is and what that is worth to you.  We just budget about $600 a month for medical expenses on top of our premiums which are 50% paid by us and 50% made by DH's company, so about $500 a month for our part.  We budget $600 a month, but we have the cash flow to pay the whole thing in January, which we had to do this year. 

AnnapolisLari

KoriBrett:

Our D is 1500 through work - I guess the thing you'd have to think about is this - would you be able to hand over $2500 to the hospital or whoever with no notice?  Does anyone have health issues that would make up for the higher monthly $, or is everyone pretty healthy?  What's the rx coverage like, and would it be worth it for you guys to get good drug copays?

Frankly I only met my stupid deductible when I was pregnant.  Totally useless for me. 

We're done having babies, and this doesn't include maternity coverage, anyway. None of us have health issues, aside from seasonal allergies.

I don't have the paperwork in front of me, but I think the prescription copay is about $20. I don't see paying $300 more a month as worth it, and I think the script copay is the same whichever plan we choose.

hopefulmom

Ours is $7,500 per family.  We did not choose it...GM chose it for us (salary).  TYVM!