I know how much the American health care system sucks. But I have looked into a high deductible health care plan on the exchange for myself and my wife - both over 50 to calculate how much we would need to survive a month of unemployment. It was around $1000/mo with no subsidies for a bronze plan.

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bix6 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You think regular Americans have the money to afford high deductible plans? One ER visit bankrupts people.

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raw_anon_1111 12 hours ago | parent [-]

High deductible plans max out at around $10K deductible. But it’s the same cost in my experience low deductible vs high deductible + HSA contribution.

The difference being that if you don’t need to use your HSA in a year you keep it - unlike low deductible plans.

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bix6 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Ah yes because the family making $40k/year can afford $10k in medical expenses.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In my experience the cost of a low deductible health plan is more expensive than a high deductible health plan + equivalent amount of a pre tax HSA. I have never known a health care provider that you can’t negotiate a payment plan with. Even if your HSA isn’t funded, they could probably have a payment plan = HSA monthly contribution and then take it out of the HSA. Yes I understand that a lot of people making $40K would be deftly afraid of doing that. But they would still statistically come out ahead

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ceejayoz 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a family plan; the bronze plans are $2400 or so a month. But that means a huge deductible; for a high-needs family, it works out worse financially.

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raw_anon_1111 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When I compared plans at work over the years, I’ve found that it is rarely cheaper to do low deductible/higher monthly costs than higher deductible /lower monthly cost + pay deductible out of pocket.

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ceejayoz 14 hours ago | parent [-]

That will vary from person to person.

In our case, we tend to hit the max out-of-pocket pretty fast.

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raw_anon_1111 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Is that still cheaper than high deductible + HSA contribution to cover the deductible?

	▲	ceejayoz 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. Substantially so, in my case. Likely not for many, but I definitely did all this math annually.

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bdangubic 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Both my wife and I have been contractors for decade+ and have been with Kaiser and are paying $1.1k/month for Bronze-ish plan (1 child)

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raw_anon_1111 13 hours ago | parent [-]

How does that work if you have a pre-existing condition? I am honestly curious

	▲	ceejayoz 13 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		ACA-compliant plans can't deny or change pricing for them. It was a good change, but it needed the individual mandate to function successfully. That got removed.
	▲	bdangubic 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		ACA put a stop to that

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14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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