It depends if you can afford a couple grand out of pocket or not. If not, you don’t want a HD plan. If you can, why pay the insurance company extra premiums and profit margin when you can insure the unlikely event of a $5k max deductible hit? Insurance is paying up for risk reduction, and if you can take the risk, don’t pay the extra fees to insure it.
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I agree with xerty. There’s nothing wrong with a high deductible plan in lots of circumstances. More choices are better than fewer choices. My family is having a guaranteed expensive procedure this year that I knew about at our open enrollment last year (wife is pregnant). Even knowing that we would be forced to pay the deductible for her, it was still smarter to go with the high deductible plan in our case.
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I asked this question previously, and one benefit of insurance is the reduced prices you pay so you don’t have to try to negotiate from an insane cash price.
The other obvious benefit is that if you have a 100k catastrophe, with a 5k deductible, you’re in debt 5k. Without it, you’re in debt 100k.
I can see your point, that for someone making 15k/yr, the 5k is extremely difficult to payoff. But 100k is impossible to pay off.
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Same thing happened with Obamacare too though… People received subsidies for the premiums, great now they have insurance. A lot of plans had $1000 ind / $2000 family deductible. For someone making 15-20k a year, it is basically like not having insurance. If you go to the doctor for an xray, lab test or MRI, you end up with a $1000 bill that might as well be $10,000 when you only have $10 of disposable income each month.
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You’re missing the cost sharing reductions in Obamacare, which lower deductibles and out of pocket costs. It varies by area, but where I live, someone making $15-$20K a year can get a silver plan for about $10 a month, with a $50 deductible and $1200 out of pocket max (which takes a lot to hit with $5-$20 copays and 80/20 coinsurance).
This also applied to people who made “too much money” to get subsidies. They ended up with insurance they could not afford to use. Some small business owners and ind contractors, I know, didn’t get coverage for that reason. That scares the crap out of me…
The biggest issue with the ACA is the 20% or so who aren’t eligible for subsidies.
For self-employed people who are anywhere close and have the savings, the solution is to add money to a Solo 401(k). That lowers the MAGI and can put you in subsidy and possibly CSR territory. That’s what I do every year. Of course, a lot of people don’t have the savings, and many people who do have the savings, don’t know to do it.
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So you declare bankruptcy and pay $0?
Scary article from the NYTimes (they are for it of course):
At the heart of the “Medicare for all” proposals championed by Senator Bernie Sanders and many Democrats is a revolutionary idea: Abolish private health insurance.
No one has examined the full economic impact of such plans on jobs, wages, investors, doctors and hospitals — or the health insurance companies themselves.
Being the NY Times, they do not address the quality and availability (waiting times) of medical care.
While the NY Times may generally be for it (although I disagree with that conclusion), the article is not advocating that position.
And they did indirectly address the quality and availability, and it’s addressed in the exact statement you quoted. Also, if you read the articles they linked, you’ll see it discussed in them.
Both Mr. Sanders and Ms. Jayapal said the switch to a government insurer would mean no loss in access to health care that private insurance provides.
Oh, like the “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” lies from our last President when they sold the individual health market on the bill of goods that was Obamacare?
Medicare works financially because of two main factors - first, they basically cover everyone of a given age cohort so there’s very little adverse selection (contrast with Obamacare where people may choose to forgo coverage or elect cheaper alternatives with less coverage; not too many totally healthy 65+ year olds), and second they’ve been collecting money from workers via wage taxes for 30-40 years before they have to pay for it (and they keep the money from the dead ones to help out too) and even so Medicare has solvency problems. Trying to offer the same level of coverage to everyone upfront would be fantastically expensive, which is what even CA admitted and you know they tried hard to make it work.
[CA] Lawmakers have not settled on a plan for paying for the new system, though the analysis released Monday noted a 15 percent payroll tax on employers would cover the increased costs.
Despite initial enthusiasm, Vermont’s governor let a state single-payer plan die in part because it was calculated that it would would require an 11.5 percent payroll tax on businesses and a state income tax of up to 9.5 percent.
When was the last time putting the government in charge of something made it cheaper? This is as true now as it was nearly 30 years ago when it was said:
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.
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[CA] Lawmakers have not settled on a plan for paying for the new system, though the analysis released Monday noted a 15 percent payroll tax on employers would cover the increased costs.
The Democrats that run CA are feeling impervious. In 2018 they pulled the trigger on their “ballot harvesting” law and worked it to perfection. An army of union thugs and illegal aliens went around collecting mail-in ballots from anyone they could find. During the election, some were caught in LA paying off street people with cigarettes and liquor for their signatures on ballot forms.
The ballot counting went on for over a month. Whenever a total was released by election officials, the Democrats knew how many ballots to produce. As a result, they flipped 7 Congressional seats to Democrat, got all the statewide offices and super-super majorities in both houses of the legislature. The Republicans in CA are clueless so the Democrats know they can do do it again any time they want.
Believe it or not Moonbeam Brown actually acted as a brake on the crazies in the legislature. Hence the 2017 single payer bill passed by the state Senate was killed in the Assembly.
The new governor Newsom has no such inhibitions. He already broke a pledge that he made to multiple newspaper editorial boards to follow the people’s vote on competing death penalty initiatives. The vote was for the death penalty but he unilaterally abolished it during his term in office.
So I fully expect a socialized system to pass here in CA and be signed into law. The only good thing will be it may pass soon enough so the rest of the country sees it crash and burn here before the 2020 election.
I really wouldn’t hold my breath for that. Assuming it passes, it’ll very likely be challenged in courts. All the way to the US supreme court. Assuming it passes that hurdle - not happening IMO considering the conservative majority there now -, it’ll take time to implement, both for CA government side but also insurers and private companies. There’s no way it can come into effect for year 2020, let alone for the results of the plan to come to fruition next year. I’d be surprised if any of this had a material impact even for 2024 elections.
Cite?
Cite?
Cite?
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I actually agree that the California legislature has gone off the rails, and I’m opposed to those ballot collection laws because of the potential for abuse, but I’m tired of reading nonsense statements which have no basis in fact.
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Dreamers==illegal aliens
Your turn to prove that my statements “have no basis in fact.”
- Dreamers currently have legal status in the US, so they are not here illegally. Your statement is factually incorrect.
- You said “army” of people and linked to an article discussing one person helping someone fill out a ballot. It did not even say that this person collected the ballot as you claimed.
- What about the union “thugs?”
- Nothing for your other claims?
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That is wrong. The DA in DACA stands for “deferred action.” They are in the US illegally but a stroke of Obama’s pen and a call from his phone to the INS deferred their deportation. That did not make them legal residents.
- You said “army” of people and linked to an article discussing one person helping someone fill out a ballot. It did not even say that this person collected the ballot as you claimed.
The puff piece from the LA Times was not a report on all the illegals taking part in the election. Do you seriously believe that this is the only illegal breaking our laws that forbid foreign interference in our elections?
- What about the union “thugs?”
See this article by the far-left Sacto Bee:
The labor federation is working with liberal mega-donor Tom Steyer on a large field program to flip more than half a dozen California House seats held by vulnerable Republicans that could help determine control of Congress.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article214238254.html
The “field program” is of course the ballot harvesting.
As to thugs, you must believe Jimmy Hoffa was just a public spirited citizen who somehow disappeared.
Nothing for your other claims?
I have shot down your specious claim that my statements “have no basis in fact.”
You don’t understand the law.
You were the one citing it in support of your argument. I don’t “believe” anything either way. I asked for your citation and you provided it. It’s strange for you to come back and say that it’s biased…
The quote and article don’t support your statement. Jimmy Hoffa? Are you saying all union leaders are thugs? Maybe you also think Las Vegas strip casinos are still run by the mafia?
Ok, well, we disagree. I guess our discussion over the past 5 or so posts will speak for itself and people can draw their own conclusions.
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No, but they ran it better and it was a lot more fun then. 
How bad are the controls when one guy can commit over a $1B Medicare fraud?