High Deductible Health plan

[easysurfer]

My HDHPis with BCBS - Illinois, with a $130/month premium. $5000 deductible, $5 million lifetime limit.

[The Dark Mistress]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

For instance:

Things to insure, things not to insure | Wise Bread

Good point. Employer pays another $20 biweekly for our dental insurance. Our basic dental expenses yearly are $512 for 2 cleanings each with exams and xrays, covered at 100% by the dental insurance-- which costs me $269/year. So, a good deal for us currently, but definitely worth revisiting from time to time.

On a somewhat related note, I'm always amazed when I'm offered a "protection plan" on some electronic gizmo that would be no sweat to replace if it broke. Do I want to "insure" the $100 ipod? Prolly not.

[Jeb-NY]

We dropped dental a few years ago. Was costing us around $400/year for the two of us and it was capped at $1800 each after a $100 deductible each. Plus they only paid half on caps and a few other things. So we were paying $600+/year for $3600 max payback. Normal years it was costing us less than $600 to pay ourself and the down side isn't that big. Not a big discount from the dentist but with no insurance forms to fill out they throw off $5/visit.

Went to High Deductible this year for the first time. I haven't setup the savings account yet but plan to let it build as a way to move more money in to tax deferred accounts, and pay expenses as long as we can out of pocket. For us the Meg-a-Corp I retired from made it an easy decision. They pay a flat amount for retire medical. The cost to switch with rate increases and all was over $8000 a year savings out of my pocket in premiums. We have a $6000/year family deductible, then they pay 70%, $10,000 max out of pocket, no lifetime max that I could find in the fine print. When you roll in the copay and the deductible from the old plan it was really a no brainer to switch. Was initially concerned about the prescription costs since my wife is on a lot of things but with all the $4 plans being offered we found cheap sources for most of the medication.

Unless something catastrophic happens in the second half of the year we will probably not hit our deductible, as it should be.

Jeb