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Which of these health insurance policies is best?

Which of these health insurance plans is best?

  • $1,250 a month premium, $0 deductible, $0 coinsurance, $0 copay, everything is covered in full.

    Votes: 1 25.0%

  • $1,000/month premium, $3,000 deductible, $0 coinsurance/copays, covered in full after deductible.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • $750/month premium, $6,000 deductible, $0 coinsurance, $0 copays, covered in full after deductible.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • $250/month premium, $12,000 deductible, $0 coinsurance/copays, covered in full after deductible.

    Votes: 3 75.0%
  • Total voters
    4
Neomalthusian said:
To reveal people's inability to objectively evaluate health insurance plans, and their tendency to irrationally fear and complain about high deductibles while ignorantly paying no attention to the cost of high premiums.

In other words, to reveal what utter bull**** you'll find in articles like these:

Trump brings back crappy insurance, catastrophic health bills, and medical bankruptcy
Horrible Health Insurance Now Legal Again, Thanks To Trump
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First.. you did not give people the ability objectively evaluate health insurance plans when you did not include the evidence on their healthcare needs.

Second.. your examples are not valid.. see Greenbeards post.
 
jaeger19 said:
First.. you did not give people the ability objectively evaluate health insurance plans when you did not include the evidence on their healthcare needs.
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There is no need for "evidence of their healthcare needs" with regard to this simple question. It's a simple challenge to contemplate the cost of premiums. There is a lot of misleading rhetoric and misconception out there about certain plans being "crap" that neglect and/or ignore consideration of the total cost of premiums.

Second.. your examples are not valid.. see Greenbeards post.
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The options are hypothetical so as to make it easy to figure out what should be the correct answer. Assuming any chance whatsoever that the insured will need less than $12,000 in health care in a given year, option #4 is easily the best. If a person absolutely positively knows they will use more than $12,000 in health care that year, they might prefer option #1 just to spread the cost evenly throughout the year (although there are ways to pay medical bills over the course of a year without much if any financial damage). A guaranteed high-biller who knows she or he will use tons of health care might prefer option #1, but is ultimately no financially better off at the end of the year with options 1, 2, 3 or 4. Any chance of not being a high utilizer, option #4 is easily the best choice. This should be obvious.
 
Neomalthusian said:
There is no need for "evidence of their healthcare needs" with regard to this simple question. It's a simple challenge to contemplate the cost of premiums. There is a lot of misleading rhetoric and misconception out there about certain plans being "crap" that neglect and/or ignore consideration of the total cost of premiums.
.
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Yes there is need for evidence since healthcare insurance is not just about the cost of premiums.

The options are hypothetical so as to make it easy to figure out what should be the correct answer.
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Problem is.. the hypotheticals don't work out in the real world. For example.. what happens if you get hurt in the fall of one year.. and spend 11,000 and not hit deductible.. and then your deductible resets that January you have to go 12, 000 in the next year to go before you hit your deductible? So now you are 23000 grand out of pocket insurance hasn't kicked in at all. and you are still paying 250 a month for premium?

How healthcare works is not as easy as you make it out. IF I knew that all of my costs for my healthcare occurring during one year ? But they don't. and so that makes thing different.
 
Neomalthusian said:
To reveal people's inability to objectively evaluate health insurance plans, and their tendency to irrationally fear and complain about high deductibles while ignorantly paying no attention to the cost of high premiums.

In other words, to reveal what utter bull**** you'll find in articles like these:

Trump brings back crappy insurance, catastrophic health bills, and medical bankruptcy
Horrible Health Insurance Now Legal Again, Thanks To Trump
Click to expand...

But these short term plans are not what you claim.

They are free of ADA standards, meaning a couple critically important things:

1) they don’t necessarily cover pre existing conditions, which means the OOP costs can be much, much greater than what was stated.

2) they also may offer ‘caps’ on payments- like the old crappy ‘mini-med’ plans that used to exist. These will pay up to a limit, meaning the insurance isn’t catastrophic at all.

And the super low premiums will attract all the healthiest people, which eventually can destabilize the market, leading to much higher premiums for everyone else.

Insurance is complicated. Your simplistic examples are fairly worthless.
 
jaeger19 said:
Problem is.. the hypotheticals don't work out in the real world. For example.. what happens if you get hurt in the fall of one year.. and spend 11,000 and not hit deductible.. and then your deductible resets that January you have to go 12, 000 in the next year to go before you hit your deductible? So now you are 23000 grand out of pocket insurance hasn't kicked in at all. and you are still paying 250 a month for premium?
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Now calculate what you’d have spent with option #1, assuming the same.
 
Neomalthusian said:
Now calculate what you’d have spent with option #1, assuming the same.
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At the end of January of the following year.. I would have spent 16250 and have had my surgeries and the rehabilitiation and after care I needed.

And after spending 1250 spent over 13 months.

In the last option. I would have spent 27, 250 in those 13 months..

And since I didn;t have 24000 in cash just sitting around.. I am paying 17% interest on the credit cards I used to finance my surgery and after care.
 
jaeger19 said:
At the end of January of the following year.. I would have spent 16250 and have had my surgeries and the rehabilitiation and after care I needed.

And after spending 1250 spent over 13 months.

In the last option. I would have spent 27, 250 in those 13 months..

And since I didn;t have 24000 in cash just sitting around.. I am paying 17% interest on the credit cards I used to finance my surgery and after care.
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There is no smart reason you should use a high interest credit card to pay medical bills. Most providers and clinics that would perform something like a surgery should offer payment arrangements that are low or no interest if they can be repaid within a year. Even if they didn’t, you could basically strong-arm them into accepting partial payments, because it is not worth their money and resources to force you into medical bankruptcy over a $12,000 bill, or lose 20 to 40% of the receivable by sending it straight to collections immediately. Most providers will work with you if you can repay it in a relatively short period time.
 
Neomalthusian said:
There is no smart reason you should use a high interest credit card to pay medical bills. Most providers and clinics that would perform something like a surgery should offer payment arrangements that are low or no interest if they can be repaid within a year. Even if they didn’t, you could basically strong-arm them into accepting partial payments, because it is not worth their money and resources to force you into medical bankruptcy over a $12,000 bill, or lose 20 to 40% of the receivable by sending it straight to collections immediately. Most providers will work with you if you can repay it in a relatively short period time.
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In other words- screw the providers over because you bought crappy insurance!

That’s probably not the best long term plan for having a strong, stable health care system....
 
Threegoofs said:
In other words- screw the providers over because you bought crappy insurance!
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It doesn't screw the providers over to pay your bills over a period of months.

That’s probably not the best long term plan for having a strong, stable health care system....
Click to expand...

The point of the question was not to define how "a strong, stable health care system" should work. The point of the question was to remind people that the cost of premiums needs to be intelligently factored in to the evaluation of any health insurance policy.

A lot of people seem to be too averse to deductibles and not averse enough to premiums, and don't pay enough attention to or care about the premiums as much as they do the deductibles. If the way health insurance plans were presented quantified the premiums annually, and added to that amount the out of pocket maximum to show the total financial exposure for health costs, then these plans would be a little bit easier for people to look at rationally.

I've shopped for health plans in the past and (assuming in-network care), graphed the cost curves and found that the lowest deductible "gold" plan was more expensive at almost every amount of health expenditure. Meaning people who choose that plan are doing so because it psychologically feels good to them to have a low deductible, even though it will likely cost them more than any other plan no matter what they end up needing.
 
Neomalthusian said:
It doesn't screw the providers over to pay your bills over a period of months.



The point of the question was not to define how "a strong, stable health care system" should work. The point of the question was to remind people that the cost of premiums needs to be intelligently factored in to the evaluation of any health insurance policy.

A lot of people seem to be too averse to deductibles and not averse enough to premiums, and don't pay enough attention to or care about the premiums as much as they do the deductibles. If the way health insurance plans were presented quantified the premiums annually, and added to that amount the out of pocket maximum to show the total financial exposure for health costs, then these plans would be a little bit easier for people to look at rationally.

I've shopped for health plans in the past and (assuming in-network care), graphed the cost curves and found that the lowest deductible "gold" plan was more expensive at almost every amount of health expenditure. Meaning people who choose that plan are doing so because it psychologically feels good to them to have a low deductible, even though it will likely cost them more than any other plan no matter what they end up needing.
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I guess this is the part where you didn’t pretend that you said that the bill would be reduced 30% just by asking.

And then you go back to the point about premiums that has been blown out of the water by several posters, clarifying that you don’t usually schedule medical emergencies by calendar years.
 
Neomalthusian said:
There is no smart reason you should use a high interest credit card to pay medical bills. .
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It is when that's all you have...


Most providers and clinics that would perform something like a surgery should offer payment arrangements that are low or no interest if they can be repaid within a year. Even if they didn’t, you could basically strong-arm them into accepting partial payments, because it is not worth their money and resources to force you into medical bankruptcy over a $12,000 bill, or lose 20 to 40% of the receivable by sending it straight to collections immediately. Most providers will work with you if you can repay it in a relatively short period time
Click to expand...

Actually what many providers are doing.. is pairing with credit card companies etc.. so that if you cannot pay your surgery costs up front.. i.e. meet your deductible. you can apply and get a credit card that then pays the physician and outpatient hospital upfront (minus 3% usually).. and then the collections, and the interest is the purview of the credit card company.

Much better from the providers perspective. And pre payment of deductible is required before surgery, or admittance to rehabilitation hospital etc.

That's the real world dude.

.
 
Neomalthusian said:
It doesn't screw the providers over to pay your bills over a period of months.
.
Click to expand...

It most certainly does.

I've shopped for health plans in the past and (assuming in-network care), graphed the cost curves and found that the lowest deductible "gold" plan was more expensive at almost every amount of health expenditure. Meaning people who choose that plan are doing so because it psychologically feels good to them to have a low deductible, even though it will likely cost them more than any other plan no matter what they end up needing.
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Sure.. just like a person will buy a couch on rent to own.. even though they will end up paying for two or maybe three times that couch in payments.

Except.. when you need medical care... you can often NEED it NOW.. while a couch not so much.
 
Neomalthusian said:
I've posted this question across three forums and you're just the 2nd person so far to answer correctly.

I should have included an assumption that the insurance buyer does not know whether she or he will need a lot of health care in the coming plan year or not, because technically if someone knew they'd be getting tens of thousands of dollars in health care or more, then they might choose the low-deductible plan just to spread their cost evenly throughout the year. Although technically they could probably easily get a low or no-interest credit arrangement with the provider/facility, or a loan to spread out their health cost just the same. But that's the only conceivable scenario in which the low-deductible plan could arguably be "best," in that it spreads out the annual cost evenly across 12 months which otherwise would be payable sooner. But that's only if the person knows they're going to be incurring lots and lots of health care.
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I answered correctly TOO in another forum :)
 
Hawkeye10 said:
It depends upon a lot of things like I said for instance I was reading that 40% of Americans can not cover a $500 emergency expense, and I furthermore read that many people have insurance but dont access care because they cant pay the deductible.

If you are going to quiz a bunch of forums maybe you best put in a little more work in making a quality question.
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Most are paying a high premium AND have a high deductible. If one can afford option a, one can afford the deductible for option d, if it is needed.
 
Sasser said:
Most are paying a high premium AND have a high deductible. If one can afford option a, one can afford the deductible for option d, if it is needed.
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Well when we spend 17%-18% GDP on healthcare with poor results when lots of other people get better results from 11ish% GDP somebody has to pay.

Maybe just maybe we should get a wild hair and fix healthcare like Obama said he was doing but he is such a liar.

We need to do it for real, this system is going down one way or another, the more proactive we can be the less painful this will be....crashes are not nice.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Well when we spend 17%-18% GDP on healthcare with poor results when lots of other people get better results from 11ish% GDP somebody has to pay.

Maybe just maybe we should get a wild hair and fix healthcare like Obama said he was doing but he is such a liar.

We need to do it for real, this system is going down one way or another, the more proactive we can be the less painful this will be....crashes are not nice.
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Please explain how the healthcare system is going to "crash".
 
jaeger19 said:
Please explain how the healthcare system is going to "crash".
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The super expensive not very good healthcare system along with all of the other super extensive not very good work things that we do are driving America into a wall....when we hit that wall everything suffers.

The people who think that we can keep adding more debt every year and everything will be fine are reality avoiding junkies only concerned with having the next fix.

The bottom is coming, and say it is coming quickly.

Doing things right actually matters.

SHOCKING!

*SARCASM*
 
Hawkeye10 said:
The super expensive not very good healthcare system along with all of the other super extensive not very good work things that we do are driving America into a wall....when we hit that wall everything suffers.

The people who think that we can keep adding more debt every year and everything will be fine are reality avoiding junkies only concerned with having the next fix.

The bottom is coming, and say it is coming quickly.

Doing things right actually matters.

SHOCKING!

*SARCASM*
Click to expand...


Ummm yeah.. again... please explain how our healthcare system is going to "hit a wall".. and please explain whats actually going to happen.
 
jaeger19 said:
Ummm yeah.. again... please explain how our healthcare system is going to "hit a wall".. and please explain whats actually going to happen.
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The exact mechanism of collapse can rarely be known, something that you should know.
 
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Hawkeye10 said:
The exact mechanism of collapse can rarely be known, something that you should know.
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Sure you can. We know the mechanisms that caused the housing market crash.

So ... you made statement regarding a crash in our healthcare system.. please explain how that would happen.
 
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