Your opinion/input on HSA health insurance? (high deductible)

[wartrace]

I'm going to be without health insurance in a couple of months and have been shopping around. I found a plan from Blue cross/blue shield for 116/mo with a yearly deductible of 5,000 dollars. This is a policy for a single individual. I am not on any medication & no known health problems.

My questions are this; Are HSA health insurance plans a good way to go? Are there drawbacks to this type of insurance? I realize I am responsible for the first 5,000 dollars of expenses. I have shopped other plans but a policy like I enjoy now with my employer is over three hundred dollars a month and I would still have a co-pay to deal with. I am planning on self employment and I will not have the capital to invest in the business if I am forced to pay much over 150.00 a month for coverage. I will be able to invest 2500 in the HSA account to start but I would like to keep my monthly expenses as low as possible for the first few years.

Any opinions?

[madaboutharry]

1. We had an HSA plan

in my husband's last job. I don't really understand all the details of how it worked, but basically I thought it SUCKED. It was really like not having insurance. At least that is the way it felt.

[global1]

2. You - Like Myself - Are Good Examples Why Single Payer Is The Only Way To Go...

Your comment of: "I am planning on self-employment and I will not have the capital to invest in the business if I am forced to pay much over $150/month for coverage."

All small, entreprenurial businesses are facing the same issue. If the government seriously wants to buck up small business - we need a single payer system. We need to get the insurance companies out of this.

Big businesses are also faced with the rising costs of keeping their employees covered - and as a result can't grow like they should or like their foreign counterparts are.

We need a single payer system. This needs to happen soon or will be seeing other industries like the auto industry go down as well.

[wartrace]

10. That would be nice.

I hope that the broken health system in our country is fixed & soon. I would be willing to pay more in taxes to support a single payer system. Those people that oppose fixing the problem don't seem to realize that THEY ARE ALREADY paying for the uninsured through higher insurance premiums & increased provider costs due to write-offs for care provided to those with no insurance.

[willing dwarf]

3. If your health is good and you've got $5000 in case of emergencies

Then I'd say you'd be in good shape. My husband and I had a plan perhaps like this for about 10 yrs while he was self-employed. We had too much income to qualify for a state plan, but so little income that we qualified for something Blue Cross called "Plan C" it sounds similar.

We were fine with it. Sometimes it felt scary, but good health helps a lot. Mostly what you need is the hospitalization and catastrophic coverage. I personally feel like you can stay healthier by going to the doctor less and avoiding prescription drugs as much as possible.

[old mark]

4. It would only be useful if you needed something like heart surgery

or were suddonly diagnosed with cancer, etc - Most of the time you would never use it, and would be paying that monthly fee for nothing.
Health insurance companies, like banks, are not your friend.

FWIW, if you can get any decent insurance for $350/month, jump on it, co-pay or not.
My last quote from Blue Cross was $800/month just for me, and that was nearly a year ago.
Most companies-like most banks-regard small business owners as very high risk and do not like to insure them at all.
Good luck.


mark

[wartrace]

8. Thats why I want it. Major health issues could bankrupt me.

Have you looked into the HSA accounts? They have some that only have a 1,200 dollar deductible. If you go for the PPO or other plans you will pay 800 or more. I am mainly worried about something major happening to me like a car accident with an uninsured driver or heart/cancer/???? I could never hope to pay three or four hundred thousand dollars out of pocket.

I have car insurance but I hope I never use it either! I would rather pay the monthly fee for nothing than not pay it & need it.

[old mark]

16. I live in PA, and finally qualified for the state supported cheap

health insurance plan they have but don't like to tell anyone about. I pay about $250 per month, but had to change doctor and hospital. But at least I have it....
I have had 2 heart attacks and bypass surgery, also a pacemaker - I can't be without it.
Good luck.
mark

[OHdem10]

5. If you do not need a lot of Health care, this is ok for a while.

Because of the high deductible, you pay everything out
of pocket . We had an HSA for a period. I put off going
to Doctors.

Not bad for a short-term fix.

[wartrace]

7. It is a short term fix for me (hopefully).

I really have to keep my expenses as low as possible for a couple of years.

[frazzled]

6. Being in good health might be a contraindication for this type of plan

You will be paying approximatlely $1,400 a year for this plan in premiums. Even people in good health can end up with expenses, however. Thus, for instance, I had to pay a $750 bill for foot x-rays out of the $1,000 yearly deductible our plan had. It was the only health expense I incurred for the entire year. My husband had a minor test for which he paid the full $1,000 deductible. So in addition to the thousands of dollars in premiums we were paying for our employer-sponsored insurance each year, we were paying $2,000 for the very minor things we needed. It felt like having no health insurance. Granted, some day we'll end up in the ICU and perhaps make up that difference... but for the time being it felt like a bad deal. We switched this year from the plan's PPO to the HMO, where we pay no deductibles. We'll see how that goes.

I hope I'm making sense. But I am not keen on high deductible plans. In terms of the "savings" aspect of the HSA, I am not so familiar and so can't comment.

[Lars39]

9. I went from being to healthy

to having surgery late one summer and another early in the next year. We had an $8,000 deductible. So in a relatively short time I racked up $16,000 medical debt. Bankruptcy wasn't too far behind. :(

[wartrace]

11. I am hoping I can manage.

The problem is I am starting the business on a shoestring & a dream. It is something I have always wanted to try and I have the time/capital to do it right now. I am being severed from my employment next month (good thing-long story) so I will have the free time to pursue this dream. Right now the job market is kind of tight anyways so I figure I can give it six months to a year to see if I can generate enough revenue to survive. I will calculate what the cost of a better insurance plan would be when determining the viability of the business.

[mwooldri]

12. I'm mixed... HSA is just a band-aid solution really...

We converted to high deductibles at work with a twist: our employer contributes to our HSA.

You got to do the maths and figure things out, and when you use health care monitor your costs and yes, shop around.

The big advantage is that if you were to get hospitalized for even a week you won't necessarily get bankrupted and the hospital is more inclined to keep you in and treat you rather than kick you out once you're "stabilized" if you can prove you can pay the bill.

Can it pay off in the long run? If you're always healthy then yes absolutely. These HSA type plans usually include free physicals and some other free preventive medical screenings. I went to Blue Cross/Blue Shield of NC's website, and asked for a quick quote on their plans, for a male aged 35 living in Greensboro. Their most expensive plan had a deductible of $250, co-insurances for doctors visits and drugs even if you've met the deductible, and that's $283.48 a month. Their cheapest plan is a HSA based plan, pays essentially everything after you have paid your $5,000 deductible. It runs at $69.37 a year. Cost difference between the two premiums is $214.11 a month. Under this scenario, if I have more than $2600 of health expenses a year then I might be better off with the most expensive plan. Otherwise I'd be better off popping that money away into an HSA account.

Everyone needs health insurance, and if all you can afford is a high deductible plan, then get that because a trip into hospital these days is not cheap. My son spent 9 days in hospital last year. The room worked out to be about $680 a night before insurance. That's just the room charge, not the nurses or everything else. The whole 9 days worth of hospital costs was $28,002.80. The surgeons billed $17,756.00. The uninsured cost of this trip would have been $45,758.80. Thankfully I had insurance and money in the HSA. My cost was $701.95 (I had other doctors trips that ate the deductible up - mine is $2200).

[patriotvoice]

13. Avoid BCBS at all costs. They will escalate you at a minimum of 25% each year.

I had a PPO then a High Deductible ($10k) with them, which they increased 25% the first year, then 28% the second, then 27% the third. And I haven't been to the doctor in years, 20/15 vision in both eyes, no cavities, and get my teeth cleaned twice a year. In other words, my total medical expenses in a year are less than $300. After that ludicrous increasing "because they had to", I said fuck off. They're for profit now, and it shows.

I own my own business, and I have done so for a decade. I used to pay 100% of the insurance (medical, dental, vision) for officers and 50% for employees. After that continual redoubling by that fucking insurance company, I told everyone: you're on your own. For myself, I have a nice high dollar life insurance policy and keep the cash I would give to those fuckers in a high-yield savings account.

My point: you're already risking going out on your own (kudos!). Why not go a little further and forget insurance? Send them a nice letter telling them to fuck off, to boot: you don't need them.

If anyone wants to bitch about my opinion, realize this: With every dollar you put in their fucking coffers, you support their continued existence and continued raping of the American people. Fact: we have a capitalist system. The only way to defeat that system is to take your money elsewhere, and sometimes that means you take personal risk. So, again, this is my opinion, for my situation, and for my needs.

[hunter]

14. They suck sweaty maggot infected bull testicles.

My wife and I have chronic health problems and an HSA -- because that's the only insurance we can get these days without throwing in the towel and joining the ranks of the working poor, Wal-Mart employees, etc., who must rely upon the government and emergency room visits for their health care. By October or November we've always reached the huge deductible, which is about the same as the premiums we've paid all year, and then woohoo, December is the time we try to get any medical care we've put off, although we are often unsuccessful because it's a busy time of year in medicine, don't you know, probably because all the other unfortunate people who have HSA's are trying to do the same thing, not to mention the poor slobs who are having complicated medical procedures on their Christmas vacations because they don't want to inconvenience their employers and get themselves laid off.

But for one or two whole months it's like our prescriptions are free, and it's really funny, because that's also when the insurance company usually sends out letters asking if we've considered taking some wildly inappropriate generic prescriptions rather than the prescriptions they don't even pay for ten or eleven months a year. Um, like "duh?," all this year we pay for these expensive prescriptions ourselves and you think we haven't thought about switching to some generic???

:nuke:
  :grr:

[dflprincess]

15. My employer is moving to a HSA plan next year

I'm hoping the economy improves so I can start looking for a job that still has actual health insurance.

There was an article in the Minneapolis paper last December that these sorts of plans are starting to backfire. They may save the employer money the first year but, as employees put off seeing their doctors and start stretching the meds out to avoid more copays they wind up costing both the employee and employer more.

[Xolodno]

17. I'm on a High Deductible Plan...

Through work. They dropped all HMO coverage and our choices were a PPO with a $1200 deductible, HSA 2,500 Deductible (5k family)and a 5,000 deductible (10k family). I chose the 2,500 plan since the company throws in a thousand in a savings account for medical use and I calculated the difference in premium from the PPO (about a 100 bucks a month) and had that deducted (tax free) straight into the health savings account. The account pays for meds, doctor visits, etc. while it eats away at the deductible. If you have to go that route, I would certainly make it a point to contribute more money into the HSA as you go on.

[antigop]

18. Do you realize health savings accounts are the GOP agenda for healthcare?

http://www.house.gov/tierney/press/health051304.shtml

The third piece of the GOP agenda for the week, Health Savings Accounts, is part of the highly flawed new Medicare law.

“Republicans claim they are trying to help small business owners achieve affordable health care for employees with association health plans (AHPs), when really their bill would increase, not lower costs. Currently, small businesses can already join state-regulated AHPs that provide important consumer protections, however, the Republican AHP bill would remove these protections and be harmful to consumers,” said Tierney.

“The GOP claims their medical malpractice legislation would bring the cost of health care down by lowering doctors’ premiums, which would reduce health care costs for consumers. That is simply a false statement,” said Tierney. “If this bill were to be made law, premiums would not go down, because the first time this legislation was brought to the floor, insurance companies did not allow the bill to be amended with a requirement that they would drop their premiums if awards were capped at a certain level. If this bill was about lowering premiums, it would make insurance companies comply with anti-trust laws, from which they are currently exempt, and have enforceable provisions so that premiums would go down substantially if damage awards were capped.”

“Several non-partisan studies have shown that the third piece of the GOP Agenda, Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), will increase the cost of health care for all those who do not participate in this type of program,” said Tierney. “Health Savings Accounts create an enormous incentive for employers to drop comprehensive health insurance plans and instead offer polices that carry very high deductibles and co-payments. These Health Savings Accounts are designed to be tax shelters for the wealthy, not insurance coverage for the uninsured.”

From the GOP 2008 platform:
http://www.gop.com/2008Platform/HealthCare.htm

Republicans believe all Americans should be able to obtain an affordable health care plan, including a health savings account, which meets their needs and the needs of their families.

If it's part of the GOP platform, do you really think it's a good thing?

[wartrace]

19. It may be a good thing (short term) for me.

I will have NO health insurance in a couple of months. I can't afford the hmo plan so bad idea or not it might be an HSA or nothing. One car wreck away from bankruptcy.

[antigop]

20. I hear ya, wartrace. Hope things improve for you. n/t