What does a deductible mean and why do you still have to spend money when you go to a doctor if you pay for insurance every month?
What are the other fancy words I need to know?
How do you know if something is a good deal?
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First, your company (i.e. your employer) chooses your health care plan, which means you don’t get to choose your doctors. That’s really weird because they can change it on a whim. My wife had a OBGYN that was with her through the birth of a couple of kids, and poof, gonzo, we got switched to a different plan.
If you lose your job, for whatever reason, you lose your health care. You will be unemployed and have to come up with about $2k/month in COBRA payments.
So, my company pays a bit over $2k per month in premiums for my family (4 people). We have a high deductible. That means that whatever medical service I get, I pay for it completely out of pocket, insurance doesn’t pay anything. My deductible is $6,000. And this resets every year, and that is the real stinger. You can get double whammies because you will pay 6k, then the plan year resets, so you have to pay 6k again.
The purpose of a deductible is to discourage people from seeking medical care. It puts an up front cost on seeing a doctor. It is basically like you still are paying more premium for the insurance.
When you hit that deductible limit (6k) then insurance kicks in and will cover 80% of the cost, I pay the other 20%. Something like an ER visit can cost 10k or 20k, so you have to pay 20% of that.
Some things are just not covered by your insurance, so they don’t pay for those things at all, you pay for the entire thing. My kid got a blood test once, and insurance refused to cover any of it.
> How do you know if something is a good deal?
There is no such thing. When seeking medical care, you are not shopping around, you are not comparing prices, you are not looking for a coupon, or a sale. You go to your care providers, and they charge you whatever the fuck they want to charge you, and you pay it.
Bonus story: if I sound a bit pissed off it is because I am, I just received the bill for an ER visit a few weeks ago. Total billed is $18,000, insurance covered $12,000, and I have to pay out of my pocket nearly $6,000. Fuck. Note to self, next time, just fucking die. It would be way more affordable to just fucking die. My family would be better off.
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