Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Chatter > General Discussion


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 06-28-2005, 02:34 PM   #1 (permalink)
Junkie
 
kutulu's Avatar
 
Let's play a game

Here is the game: How much do you pay for health care costs and how does it compare to your other monthly expenses?

I’m sitting here thinking about how I have about $50 to last me until Friday when I get paid and how $30 of it needs to go to get gas. As usual, I start thinking about where my money went.

I’m paying $329.87 every two weeks for health care. That is $7,916.88 per year if you are counting at home, kids. I’m married and we have an 8 month old baby girl. All three of us are on the plan and my employer pays 75% of my premiums and 50% of those for my wife and daughter. I’m cheap, the total for me and my employer is about $87/mo, therefore the insurance company is getting a grand total of $1,406.48/month out of me and my employer ($16,877.26/year).

By way of comparison, our two cars cost us $604/mo and the rent is $795/mo. Health care is the second largest monthly expense for us. It makes up about 18% of my pre-tax earnings (but at least I don’t pay taxes on my insurance premiums, right?). The insurance company is actually getting more money than all my fed and state taxes, SS, and medicare COMBINED! Oh, by the way, this doesn’t include dental or vision coverage, just crappy medical insurance with a $25 ded and a max of something like $3,500 out of pocket expenses.

I know there are other health care threads out there but I wanted to put this out there since they usually only hint at the high costs of health care. This thread can give us all an idea of what people are paying and how much of a burden it is on people. You don’t need to give examples that are as personal as I gave, just some round numbers.
kutulu is offline  
Old 06-28-2005, 03:13 PM   #2 (permalink)
32 flavors and then some
 
Gilda's Avatar
 
Location: Out on a wire.
I have a family plan through work that covers me, spouse or domestic partner, and children. It's a flat rate regardless of whether you're single, married, or have, as one of the teachers does, 10 kids. The school district pays the entire cost, about $700 a month for health with a $150 deductible, dental and vision for the employee only.

Grace also has full coverage through work, also of herself and a spouse/domestic partner, which her employer pays roughly $900 a month with a $250 deductible. Dental and vision are available for spouses/domestic partners for a buy in.

This means that either of us has insurance that would cover us both. Since my insurance provides better coverage than hers, and we don't wish to pay two deductibles, we file all claims on my insurance. This means that the $900 her employer pays is pure profit for that insurance company, as we won't be making any claims.

So, a total of $1600 a month paid for health insurance, by the employer. Car payments, on two cars, total about $1000. The mortgage is tricky, but without going into detail, sets us back about $1200 a month.

In addition, my sister (a full time college student) isn't covered on either of our insurance, and every insurance plan we've checked specifically excludes her treatments, so it's all cash for her, between $100 and $200 a month, not counting extraordinary expenses like her recent surgery.

So, if you add up what my employer pays, what her employer pays, and what we pay out of pocket for my sister's expenses, it's a tad bit less than housing and cars put together, and a lot more than food, clothing, and entertainment. It's easily the biggest expense if figured that way.

If you only count up out of pocket, and leave out Sissy's surgery, it's actually negligible, less than one car payment.
__________________
I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert
Gilda is offline  
Old 06-28-2005, 03:28 PM   #3 (permalink)
Junkie
 
kutulu's Avatar
 
Damn, that's great stuff. It's interesting that the total costs are similar to what mine are, just that it's all taken care of.

I expected a public job to have good benefits but that is amazing. Does Grace have a job for a private company or is she also a state employee?

I'm trying to get a new job right now with another place. When I hear about people getting such great med benefits it gives me hope.
kutulu is offline  
Old 06-28-2005, 04:57 PM   #4 (permalink)
32 flavors and then some
 
Gilda's Avatar
 
Location: Out on a wire.
There are some 300,000 public school teachers in California. With a pool that big, costs come way, way down per unit. Different districts buy in at different levels. My district opted for the family plan, with the highest coverage. We had to forego a raise in favor of full insurance coverage, and costs are also controlled by having a single plan for all employees. With a single cost, single people and those with large families pay the same, so singles are overpaying, while families are underpaying. Even when I was single, this didn't bother me in the least. It also gets married couples, for whom the district pays twice for the same coverage.

My wife works as a nurse/paramedic for an ambulance company, which, as you would expect, also tends to offer excellent benefits. There are different coverages depending upon your grade; an EMT tech trainee gets nothing paid by the employer, but can buy in out of pocket, while those at the highest grade, like Grace, get full coverage paid by the employer. Even given that, her insurance costs more, has a higher deductible, and offers less coverage than mine, which is why we use my insurance.
__________________
I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert
Gilda is offline  
 

Tags
game, play

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 10:19 PM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360