Well, medical costs are of course the big unknown for ER planning; so I wonder what do people do in this area? Please share your thoughts and considerations. I appreciate any responses. If you can break it down for a newbie, that would be great! (The more details, the more we can appreciate on how believable the estimates are.)
How much do you plan to (or already) spend in ER on your medical expenses? If you can, please include ALL expenses including premiums, out-of-pocket costs, drug costs, catastrophic coverage, dental, eyes, LTC (if any) etc. Also do you have a number in mind for both average and maximum amounts? Do you have a worst-case scenario cap (e.g. after $100k my plan will pay 100%)?
What do you assume for inflation for your medical expenses?
How do you account for worsening health as you age?
Please also indicate number of covered people and whether you are in US. I would be very interested about the same questions for Canada (there are dental/eye/misc medical expenses there too).
According to
test-driving-retirement-plans: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance, one plan estimated yearly costs of 13k@7% inflation while another 11k@2.6% inflation for 2 people ~60yo... (which for example means 30 years from now one plan assumes YEARLY cost of ~100k and the other ~24k). And it's unclear if those figures included everything and whether they had max caps on those plans.
I read some earlier related threads here and I see folks here with ranges of $500-1000-1500 per month with 5k-10k deductable plans but it's not clear to me what would be the
total average expenses (including all those other items), and whether there is any max that you are budgeting for these (not to mention inflation/worsening health considerations)...
Also, if you are in a plan and you get cancer for example, is the company required to keep insuring you forever and cannot single you out for increasing your premiums? What if it goes out of business? Then I guess you are out of luck, right? (well, maybe state's high-risk pool is where you end up... what are the costs there? any maximum out-of-pocket for services and drugs?)
BTW, for LTC, I figure I don't need it because when I need the coverage, I'll just spend whatever I have left at that point (no children / dependents for me... so far) and then will have to go on gov program if still alive... but let me know if you think this might be a wrong approach.
On the other hand, something like a cancer where I might still live for decades makes me nervous about not having some max protection but I have no idea what it would cost to have such protection (obviously not limited to cancer but to ALL costly medical problems where you still can live for a while).
Final thought: I think for planning purposes it's useful to assume that Obamacare will fail - if it succeeds, then (a) plans would have to be adjusted anyway when it's more clear what is available, and (b) it can always be reversed by next presidency.... so just trying to get a handle on this under existing rules.
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