mountainsoft
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
I'm trying to estimate what our healthcare expenses might be when we retire using the Washington Healthplan Finder (for Washington state, of course). To keep things "simple" I'm only comparing plans from Kaiser Permanente (what we have now through my wife's employer) with subsidies based on our estimated income. Unfortunately, I'm getting buried in all the premium, deductable, copay, coinsurance, and other lingo to make any meaningful comparison.
The healthplan finder gives an "estimated out of pocket cost, INCLUDING premiums". But that's obviously useless as it estimates a $350/mo plan as costing $1900 for the year (350x12=4200?).
I assumed if I had a $1000 deductible we would pay out-of-pocket until our costs got over $1000. Then insurance would cover a portion of the additional expenses until we reached our out-of-pocket-maximum (say $7500). Then we would pay nothing over that. But none of the examples I see on Kaisers plans work anything like that, and don't include enough detail to understand where the costs are going.
I'm just trying to estimate our "worst case" healthcare expenses. I could just add the premium and max out-of-pocket cost, but that would be overkill. We had one major hospital expense last year ($80K before insurance), but most years we only spend $2k to $5K per year per person (before insurance).
How on earth do you make sense of this stuff to make any meaningful estimation?
How do you choose between gold, silver, bronze or decide what deductible to select?
Bonkers over complicated...
For example, why would I pay $430/month for a Gold plan (no deductible) with a $7250 out of pocket max, when I could pay $0/month for a bronze plan (5000 deductible) with a $7750 out of pocket max?
The healthplan finder gives an "estimated out of pocket cost, INCLUDING premiums". But that's obviously useless as it estimates a $350/mo plan as costing $1900 for the year (350x12=4200?).
I assumed if I had a $1000 deductible we would pay out-of-pocket until our costs got over $1000. Then insurance would cover a portion of the additional expenses until we reached our out-of-pocket-maximum (say $7500). Then we would pay nothing over that. But none of the examples I see on Kaisers plans work anything like that, and don't include enough detail to understand where the costs are going.
I'm just trying to estimate our "worst case" healthcare expenses. I could just add the premium and max out-of-pocket cost, but that would be overkill. We had one major hospital expense last year ($80K before insurance), but most years we only spend $2k to $5K per year per person (before insurance).
How on earth do you make sense of this stuff to make any meaningful estimation?
How do you choose between gold, silver, bronze or decide what deductible to select?
Bonkers over complicated...
For example, why would I pay $430/month for a Gold plan (no deductible) with a $7250 out of pocket max, when I could pay $0/month for a bronze plan (5000 deductible) with a $7750 out of pocket max?
Last edited: