Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Employee Health Insurance

Our system is goverment mandated at this point.

Our healthcare is expensive because it is worth it. Any American that wants to spend less, can.

Lesser service is undoubtably cheaper. Go get it.

HCA gave alot of companies that offered a decent comprehensive health plan the opportunity to switch over to HSA plans where they pass cost increases onto employees in the form of higher deductibles. Obama coined the term "cadillac plan" and made it an elitist thing to offer a low cost HMO to employees when those poor huddled masses he represented didn't get anything.

Many people now have a catastrophic health care plan where a handful of things are covered by HCA by mandate but you pay for everything else full price until you hit your deductible, which I would guess for most family plans is any where from $5K - 8K. When I was in college, you could get a plan like that for $50 a month (minus the HCA mandates of course)

Obama ruined employer provided health care and at the same time created a new "tax" on working people in the form of health care deductibles.


This was all planned in an effort to give health care to the people who don't work and was punitive for Americans not allowing him to push thru national single provider plan where Uncle Sam manages your health.

There are definite downfalls to employer provided health care but when that became a widely available perk for the middle class in the 50's/60's, health care was affordable. Now no one can afford it and Obama's bright idea was to give it to the poor as a subsidized plan while the people who work get to pay a bigger chunk for it out of their own pocket.

I hate him for that.

that is a big driver, another issue is our government writing checks for health care for seniors while lobbyist advocate for greater health care coverage. Remember the concept of a ward in a hospital where multiple patients were in a central area cared for by 1 or 2 nurses? Now people push to avoid sharing a room at a hospital and demand individual care.

Of course we also let in millions of illegal aliens along with our current indigent who take advantage of being able to go into an emergency room to receive urgent care without concern of how it gets paid. Remember Mitt Romney running against Obama and was asked about that? His response was we already have health care, anyone can go into any hospital in American and receive care without insurance.


But your point is well taken - there are no price ceilings and while insurance negotiates rates with providers, the way around that is to pile on medical procedures and drugs. Few patients facing illness or disease are going to tell a doctor no when he tells them they need a test or need to take an expensive drug - and no one is going to shop around, especially with the concept of "in network" medical care.

Dutch,
One thing I have attributed to expensive medical, is the coding.
Take a car to the garage, get a bill from a gunsmith,
It will be itemized with plain language explaining every charge.

Go to the hospital, get a bill.
It will show a 69984, and ak85gj8 and N XYZPDQ.
The insurance company pays that bill without any review from you.
You look at the receipt, choke at the price, and throw it in the drawer.
Because you have no dang clue what it means.
You got a bandaid, was that a 69984? Or were you charged for an MRI?Fraud? Mistake? How would anyone ever catch it.

If your bill from Mr. GoodWrench shows 4 new tires at $2500, you
immediately know if you wanted tires, got the tires, and probably
know that was too much for the tires.

Medical bills? It's in code.
















KWFA you are exactly right.

Before Obama, many people with deeper pockets and less concern about
medical bills bought catastrophic plans. And they were really cheap.
$3-5k, deductible $10k max.

Now?
Those terms are a normal policy, at a very high premium.
Being sold to people where the premiums hurt, and the deductible and out of pocket maximums are crushing.

Obama did not make health care affordable.
He made it more affordable to have government subsidized insurance,
that came with high deductibles that those who bought it couldn't cover. Leaving them with insurance bills, mandated by law, but still unable to get health care. Many, would be better off banking premium money toward medical expenses.

I guess the days of average employed joe not worring about the cost of healthcare and insurance premiums because “ I get health insurance with my job” are coming to an end. I been self employed for over 20 years paying my own insurance premiums so I been feeling the pain for two decades. My current monthly premium at 60 years old is $1040 a month thru Florida Blue. $7500 deductible. I do get to write off some of my premium on my taxes. Which helps. Once they push the average joe into having pay for their own or their family premiums it be easy to convince them government healthcare is the way to go. Which is what the powers to be are wanting.
As far as changing jobs goes one day there will come a time when there isnt a job that has health insurance with it out there. Seems things are going that way.

I was one of those guys with a catastrophic policy. Basically hospitalization. I paid for most all my regular healthcare expenses. Paid 250 per mo for the policy. Had a $10k deductible. As soon as Obamacare kicked in my policy was no longer available. Premiums went to 650 a month and deductible was 7500 a year. So HCA didnt make it more affordable for me. Only for those who qualified for the lower rates because they had lower incomes.

Wife covered me for years until I was old enough to get on Medicare.

Me and the 2 kids are 350 a month, high deductible plan. Our deductible I think is 11k. That being said, the deductible for the top tier plan was 7500, with a 600 premium each month. So I'm saving 3k a year in premiums...while there is only a 3500 dollar difference in deductibles, no brainer to take the hd plan. Employer also throws 500 bucks in an hsa account for me each year for taking the hd plan. Its basically comes out the same but I'm paying a lower premium.

Family plan would be 1100 a month to add the spouse, she got single coverage at her job for about 200 a month.

I've actually been diving into researching the US healthcare system and it's a really complex set of problems that have gotten us here. To begin with, we should have never had a system where the majority of people receive their healthcare through their employer, shielding them from the actual costs. It's a throwback to WW2 and the imposed wage freezes of the time. The employers worked around the wage freezes by upping the benefits, including offering free healthcare.

That's just the start of the problem. We now have a system that's almost entirely taken the consumer out of the picture and provides zero incentive for controlling costs by either the consumer or healthcare providers.

Before she became eligible for Medicare wife was on Obamacare for a short while. The next SS C.O.L.A. raise resulted in an increase of around $20 (+/-) a month to our total monthly income --- That measly $20 increase to our monthly household income caused her monthly Obamacare premium to increase $120...

and the beloved unions helped usher in the liberals who gave us Obamacare.

Pay $473 per month for 3 of us. Me, wife, youngest son. Oldest is on his own. Medical, dental, vision.
$2500 max out of pocket.
$400 per person deductible
90/10 bill coverage
$35 copay for office visit
1 annual physical free

Not a small business, so 11,000 employees nation wide has some pull I reckon. Not a union shop.
I am happy.


Clyde

Ain't that the truth.

A provided breakroom?
Rest room facilities?
Utilities?
A roof over your head while working?
Local property and equipment taxes on the above?
Equipment to work with/on?
Personnel for handling payroll & general bookkeeping?

There's more to it than what most see.

Anyone with half a brain or even less knows union dues are no where near enough to cover health costs.

Yes, that is bad.

Those are not fixed per employee costs. Even if illegals payed under the table are hired same cost.

A bit of a point, overreaching a bit?
Facilities mostly are part of the job, not the employees.

Machines? You are going to blame the cost of machinery on hiring employees? Holy [bleep] am I expensive. If the machines are my fault,
are raw materials?



It is interesting how these threads show the resentment
some employers have for their employees.
Bet that is the employees fault, and that you are a fair, kind and benevolent
boss.

Since one of my fellow employees went to court to contest having to pay union dues, even when not a member years ago, I have a figure: 75% went to campaign contributions, almost if not entirely to Democrats. Since each state (and D.C.) had a different contract, the rules on dues varied. The court ordered the union to come up with a way for non-members to recover the portion of the dues levied not associated with collective bargaining, but the process was so restrictive that most just stayed in the union. I did as well, until I went to the VA company where right-to-work laws allowed people to quit and not have the dues collected. I dropped out then, and stayed out for the remainder of my career, roughly half of my 40 years. I figure I paid more than my share for the union’s efforts on my behalf during the first 20.

Our medical and pension, thankfully, are handled by the company, not the union. I’ve seen what can happen when the union gets control of all that money.

If my employer wants me to continue working for him, he can continue to provide insurance for my entire family, at no cost to me, or he can increase my wage enough to make up the difference.

But then he, and I, would have to pay SS on the difference, and I would have to pay income tax on the additional income. I like it the way it is.