@Joe S. A few years ago I had Blue Shield for several years. It was good but very expensive. About 5 years ago we switched to Kaiser. I like it a lot. Great use of technology and communications. Decent doctors and service.
@Joe S. A few years ago I had Blue Shield for several years. It was good but very expensive. About 5 years ago we switched to Kaiser. I like it a lot. Great use of technology and communications. Decent doctors and service.
When you mention great use of technology and communications can you give an example?
@Joe S. -- I may be wrong, but health insurance seems to be a very regional thing. In NC, the local BCBS had a bit of a stranglehold on self-employed insurance until ACA came long. Depending on your income/tax situation, some of the ACA plans can be very affordable. It's kind of like how banks treat the self-employed -- almost won't bother to talk with you, but if you had a W2 gig, even flipping burgers, suddenly you are worthy of their time.
@Joe S. A few years ago I had Blue Shield for several years. It was good but very expensive. About 5 years ago we switched to Kaiser. I like it a lot. Great use of technology and communications. Decent doctors and service.
When you mention great use of technology and communications can you give an example?
I can contact my doctor or care team at any time and they will set up a phone or zoom visit as needed, arrange for imaging etc. I can order prescriptions and have them sent to my home. All my messages, records etc are on line and I can access them securely at any time. Health care is pricey and I feel like this is a pretty good deal.
@Joe S. -- I may be wrong, but health insurance seems to be a very regional thing. In NC, the local BCBS had a bit of a stranglehold on self-employed insurance until ACA came long. Depending on your income/tax situation, some of the ACA plans can be very affordable. It's kind of like how banks treat the self-employed -- almost won't bother to talk with you, but if you had a W2 gig, even flipping burgers, suddenly you are worthy of their time.
@Bruce Woodruff - great questions. My wife and I had our own businesses for decades. Being self-employed in NC, we were really stuck with only one option: BCBS-NC. With two kids under roof and fortunately all of us reasonably healthy, we had a HSA-compliant HDHP that ran us >$1400/mo. Fast-forward to me selling one of my businesses and her still working hers, I did what many old farts do at that transition: got a gig at the local hardware store. Working for not a lot more than minimum, my bigbox gig did offer very reasonable bennies including a HSA-HDHP that covered a LOT more for 60%/mo of the blue beast. I started that gig about the time ACA really starting kicking in -- and the same plan based on our joint income would have been more than what BigBox offered. Easy math decision. But my wife sold her biz early into the Covid era, and I left BigBox earlier this year. Suddenly, our income math became very different and the similar ACA (HSA-flavor) suddenly was a very different price.
Here's where ACA makes little sense: to truly be a game-changer for the insurance industry (scam, etc.), it's pricing should have really depressed the premiums/profits. It was so watered down and gutted by the career politicians as to be just another math nightmare. If you go through the online formulas and change your inputs, you get vastly different outputs for their programs. We now pay less than when I had my BigBox job. There are perfect income numbers and donut-hole pitfalls. Once I start my own BRRR empire, it'll undoubtedly get less favorable. As @Bud Gaffney stated - a scam.
Michigan BCBS, awful coverage (7k deductible), high prices, poor service.
I've tried to find anything different but every place I look has large coverage holes or exemptions that bring me back to BCBS. If anyone has anything else I am listening.
Paying through the nose. Waiting for medicare. If our government really wanted to support entrepreneurship (and the arts) they would make medicare available to everyone. I have come to the conclusion that what both political parties that make up our government really want to do, is to maintain a work force for big business and to maintain profit margins for health insurers (who fund them and keep them in power through lobbyists).
@Austin F. Take a look at one of the Health Share companies. My wife is on one until she turns 65, and several of our friends are also. Never any issues. $1000 deductible per year. $350 month.
If our government really wanted to support entrepreneurship (and the arts) they would make medicare available to everyone.
Medicare is available to everyone. You pay into it for 50 years and then you have pretty decent insurance. Hopefully you're not suggesting that we just waive the pay-in and the 50 years wait and give it to everyone now? Splendid idea. In case you haven't checked lately we're already $30 trillion in debt......
@Bruce Woodruff That's exactly what I'm suggesting. All government spending is a question of prioritizing. I think money should be allocated in such a way as to to provide decent health care to the citizens of our country of every age. Paying down the debt may be a high priority for you but I don't think Congress is going to be any more anxious to work towards that goal than they are to revamp our current wasteful and inefficient heath care spending.
I have Canadian citizenship and I plan to retire on the Canadian west coast. I am so sick of US healthcare. 3K deductible with 5K max out of pocket per year. I have some health concerns so this becomes really annoying. “Oh let’s see the doc in Jan instead of Dec so it contributes toward next year’s deductible”. What a silly system. It is definitely affordable to provide decent healthcare for every citizen, it is about where this is on the nation’s list of priorities. There is a rich dataset of countries with affordable healthcare.
I was shocked when I heard that average long term care facilities in the US cost 8-10K a MONTH and many people go broke in these facilities if their assets are not placed in trusts, and in Canada it's roughly 2-3K per month in US dollars and I don't think US long term care is 4-5x better. There is a common arbitrage strategy in Canada and Europe, work in US and retire back in the home country with better social welfare system so you get the best of all situations. "battre le fer pendant qu’il est chaud"
@Allen L. -- look into how many Americans lose their lifetime of wealth accumulation -- medical bankruptcy. It's a game here. The politicians stir up FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and voters fall in line with their preconceived party/tribe bias and NOTHING gets improved. Just as the medical/insurance/lobbyist groups prefer. Although many of the medical professionals I know would prefer any system over what we have now. Pre-HMO or EuroCanadian model. Yet the voters are -- sheeple.
@Bruce Woodruff That's exactly what I'm suggesting. All government spending is a question of prioritizing. I think money should be allocated in such a way as to to provide decent health care to the citizens of our country of every age. Paying down the debt may be a high priority for you but I don't think Congress is going to be any more anxious to work towards that goal than they are to revamp our current wasteful and inefficient heath care spending.
You're completely missing any semblance of a point here. We have no more money with which to prioritize spending. You will either raise taxes to an untenable level or push this country over the cliff it is teetering on....
Don't bother responding, I get where you're coming from....
My wife works 20 hrs a week as a RN in a clinic 1/2 a mile from our house and still gets health care for our family. Since its so small she knows all the practitioners and got a script the other day w/o needing a visit. She took a big pay cut going down in hours and pay from the hospital setting but loves the daytime normal hours.