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Changing Insurances...Again

June 11th, 2018 at 12:00 am

So the job recruiting agency that DH is employed through is changing their medical plan from Aetna to Regence in July. This just got dropped on us on Friday. I've had a chance to go through it and they don't have a silver plan. They have two bronze plans, one gold plan, and one platinum plan. Can I just say the platinum plan is off the charts crazy with its premium of almost $2000 a month.

The gold plan is basically what we have now, but is $85.40 less in premiums a month. The co-pay for doctors is $5 less at $30 and the co-pay for specialists is $5 less at $50. Prescription costs are $6 less at $4 for generics. Since we have 12 prescriptions a month for the family, that will drop our costs there from $120 to $72, a savings of $48 a month.

The only downside is that the deductible we just met will start over again, and then again in 6 months. The deductible is $4000 per family. Not enough for an HSA. If MIL wasn't paying for DD's recent medical bills that would be very hard to absorb, but with it, we can manage to pay the deductible on our own. And having an additional $133.40 in the budget (minus whatever they take out for taxes on that) will be nice. The out of pocket cap is higher at $7500, though. Still, it's a prety good plan over all.

We can't even look at the bronze plans. They have $10,000 deductibles and pay for nothing until you hit that and have a $14,000 out of pocket cap. They don't have co-pays until you hit that deductible either and then it is 50% of the visit cost. That is basically not having insurance at all unless you have a major catastrophe. No good for us. No insurance would be cheaper if we are paying out of pocket for everything, but we don't dare go that route again after what happened last time.

Of course if DH does get hired on direct, and there is no sign of that yet, it would mean switching insurance yet again with another, albeit much lower, deductible.

Medical costs have skyrocketed in the last 9 years. I am not sure I will ever stop resenting the men and women that caused this or the Unaffordable Care Act they rode in on that drove insurance costs sky high for the majority of the country and drove many families to not quite poverty, but with an income just high enough to not qualify for subsidies and no way to get back ahead, because 1/3 to 1/2 of their income now goes to pay for insurance premiums and high deductibles. Medical should not cost as much as a house payment. /rant

1 Responses to “Changing Insurances...Again”

  1. Sue Says:
    1528673495

    I'm with you on the Unaffordable Care Act....we are still trying to pay off the $8,000 we owe the IRS because the Unaffordable Care Act supplemented our health insurance for 3 months while dh was laid off. REALLY, $8,000????? We appealed to the computer (can't get a person, an address, or phone #) got denied...appealed the appeal, got denied....sucking it up and paying the IRS payments....what are you going to do????

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