Lower gas prices means no Social Security increase next year

[pb4uski]

Check your policy. Some colonoscopy's are covered 100%, no deductible. I was surprised when my second 5 years later was covered 100%. I did not think it would. Pleasant sunrise for a change.

+1 mine was even though I had a HDHI plan.. they consider it preventative.

 

[NW-Bound]

My apologies, I need to specifically state "hyperbole" when implying it. But yes high deductibles as several posters state will inhibit some usage, mine included... But the main point I will explicitly make is this... It still gets to the point 20% of the population consume about 80% of all healthcare costs. The bottom half consume about 3%. If the cost of high deductibles become too great with no perceived benefit for the purchaser in relation to disposable dollars one has available, the risk/reward ratio will tilt to the side of foregoing the payments.

Now that I have been more precise with my comment, I will sleep well at night...

I knew you were exaggerating about waiting until a baseball tumor grows out of you.

Yes, by that time it will cost your insurance fistfuls of money. That will teach them.

What I meant was that you don't know such a tumor will grow out of you or not, but one thing is sure that if it does, it will cost the insurer a lot of money. Up until my life-threatening diagnosis, my doctor commended me for having such good health. I did not take any daily medicine, and at the previous annual checkup, my doctor commented that my blood test results were "the best he had seen in a long time". Well, it may not mean much when I looked around his waiting room and saw all the real geezers in there. But the point was that I thought I was giving money away to my insurer for nothing, up until I recouped all that money and then some.

My research convinced me that the treatment I got was the best money could buy, and that a billionaire with the same conditions would not get a better treatment. In fact, some treatments that I got were unavailable or limited in other developed countries!

So, I am not complaining about the cost of health insurance anymore. For decades, I used very little healthcare, and then I suddenly "made up" for it. I do not wish to be getting out more of health insurance than I pay in (What? You want to be really sick?). If being healthy makes you a loser for not getting out as much as paying in, I want to be a loser. Being a "winner" for 2 years caused me much physical pain and suffering and mental anguish, plus I now carry big surgery scars to remind myself of what I went through. Plus, I could be pushing daisy too if I was more unlucky.

Would I wish for healthcare costs to be lower? Yes. But I no longer blame insurance companies for the high cost.

 

[Mulligan]

I knew you were exaggerating about waiting until a baseball tumor grows out of you.



What I meant was that you don't know such a tumor will grow out of you or not, but one thing is sure that if it does, it will cost the insurer a lot of money. Up until my life-threatening diagnosis, my doctor commended me for having such good health. I did not take any daily medicine, and at the previous annual checkup, my doctor commented that my blood test results were "the best he had seen in a long time". Well, it may not mean much when I looked around his waiting room and saw all the real geezers in there. But the point was that I thought I was giving money away to my insurer for nothing, up until I recouped all that money and then some.

My research convinced me that the treatment I got was the best money could buy, and that a billionaire with the same conditions would not get a better treatment. In fact, some treatments that I got were unavailable or limited in other developed countries!

So, I am not complaining about the cost of health insurance anymore. For decades, I used very little healthcare, and then I suddenly "made up" for it. I do not wish to be getting out more of health insurance than I pay in (What? You want to be really sick?). If being healthy makes you a loser for not getting out as much as paying in, I want to be a loser. Being a "winner" for 2 years caused me much physical pain and suffering and mental anguish, plus I now carry big surgery scars to remind myself of what I went through. Plus, I could be pushing daisy too if I was more unlucky.

Would I wish for healthcare costs to be lower? Yes. But I no longer blame insurance companies for the high cost.

I was assuming you did, NW. That is why I did not respond to your post.[emoji6]
I was trying to side step your post because I knew where you were going was not where I was going. FWIW- I agree 100% with everything you said. Unfortunately that was not my point or source of discussion. I am not an insurance basher either. They are just the conduit. In fact they are probably one of the few sources of attempted cost containment in healthcare costs.
My main point was when a healthy person is faced with insurance costs that impose a huge stress on their income, there will come a point where they would drop it. I don't see healthy people who do not consume medical dollars selling their house and moving to an apartment or sell their car in order to ensure payment of their monthly insurance premium. And some I presume would drop it if it blew up their discretionary monies.This will be a problem people may face in coming years that are over the cliff.
I am more fortunate though. I could marry my longtime GF, and get on her plan for less than $200 with a $150 yearly medical deductible if costs become too onerous and then have someone else subsidize me. That is not our plan, but we have both agreed it is there if needed.



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[Car-Guy]

No, they misrepresent and obfuscate, because that's what governments do.

And sometimes (all too often) they just don't tell the truth.

 

[sheehs1]

I hear ya. I have a similar deductible and when I had a chronic cough checked out a year ago, the doc offered to do an X-ray although he said it would likely be negative. "No", I said. I've got a $6 thousand deductible. I don't want to pay for a negative X-ray." In retrospect, it was likely a seasonal allergy. It disappeared on its own.

The family deductible/max OOP is tricky. I was pretty horrified when I found that we had to absorb twice the per-person deductible in one year even though it was all due to DH's expenses, in order to meet the family deductible. That was my previous employer and I believe it was $1,250 per person/$2,500 family. I'd like those deductibles back, please!

I try to live in the moment but I'm really looking forward to being eligible for Medicare in a couple of years. DH has it already.

I do the same thing atehna53. When I went to my ENT for those antibiotics they wanted to scope me. From previous experience I knew they billed $500 to stick that thing up my nose (the diagnosis code is "surgery" - really) and that I would have to pay it. So…I asked to be diagnosed based on symptoms telling them, I have a $6000 deductible on top of my monthly premiums.
My dentist this year took the X-rays for "free" when I told him this. Bless him!

I have 5 years to Medicare, am crossing my fingers that they do not move the age! No telling though how much that will cost once there!

It is a government known fact that the private, individual market is a bust but yet they do absolutely nothing about it. They need to put us all "in a group" and price it like employer based coverage - even that would be better than the current pricing. Truth be told, we are in a group…but we are priced individually.

 

[Dreamer]

If being healthy makes you a loser for not getting out as much as paying in, I want to be a loser.

+1

 

[NW-Bound]

...My main point was when a healthy person is faced with insurance costs that impose a huge stress on their income, there will come a point where they would drop it. I don't see healthy people who do not consume medical dollars selling their house and moving to an apartment or sell their car in order to ensure payment of their monthly insurance premium. And some I presume would drop it if it blew up their discretionary monies.

Or they may not have the income to pay the $600/month that we paid to get the $10K deductible policy that we had. Some think that putting it all on the government's tab is the solution, but with our expensive healthcare they will just raise taxes on everyone. That money has to come from somewhere. Or they will have to cut back on coverage, and the people who can afford it will have to buy supplemental insurance no differently than what people do in some Canadian provinces or European countries. There's no free lunch.

To get back to SS and Medicare, my mother used to complain about the monthly cost for supplementals, but she has not recently. I pointed out to her how much Medicare had paid for my father until he died. And my mother now goes to doctors all the time for any ailment, even minor ones. So, they got plenty out of Medicare for what they paid in. And I suspect that their conditions are not that unusual.

 

[Mulligan]

Or they may not have the income to pay the $600/month that we paid to get the $10K deductible policy that we had. Some think that putting it all on the government's tab is the solution, but with our expensive healthcare they will just raise taxes on everyone. That money has to come from somewhere. Or they will have to cut back on coverage, and the people who can afford it will have to buy supplemental insurance no differently than what people do in some Canadian provinces or European countries. There's no free lunch.



To get back to SS and Medicare, my mother used to complain about the monthly cost for supplementals, but she has not recently. I pointed out to her how much Medicare had paid for my father until he died. And my mother now goes to doctors all the time for any ailment, even minor ones. So, they got plenty out of Medicare for what they paid in. And I suspect that their conditions are not that unusual.

I don't think we want to dig too far into the bowels of the financial soundness of Medicare. I very much doubt we would like what we find. However being at the absolute butt end of the Boomer generation, I should be very concerned.


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