You Want Healthcare Reform? Here it is…
My wife and I are what the President would call the uninsured. We’ve done this partly out of necessity (as my business builds) and partly out of economic common sense. Let me explain that last part: going without insurance is a risk, but we are relatively healthy and young. Relatively. But consider this recent–and quite true–scenario:
She’d been sick with a cold-like thing and running a fever off-and-on (mostly on) for like 6 days. She felt both an ear and possible sinus infection were coming into play, so she went to the doctor, and paid cash.
Chiropractor (back/neck hurt as well): $30
Visit: $84
Lab work: $10.40
Medicine: $8.42 (after price-shopping pharmacies…hint: go to Costco)
Total: $132.82
Now, we could be paying close to $300 $376 a month, each and every month. For each of us.
Take control of your own healthcare–rather than relying on the government. That’s a change to believe in.
My wife and I are what the President would call the uninsured. We’ve done this partly out of necessity (as my business builds) and partly out of economic common sense. Let me explain that last part: going without insurance is a risk, but we are relatively healthy and young. Relatively. But consider this recent–and quite…
True enough, and I agree. I'd say if a guy is going to go that route, he ought to be saving each month for those expenses when they come. The beauty of that is that the money sits there until you use it, and it's yours not someone else's. My daughter fell off the monkey bars at school last year. A couple hours later we had racked up about $1600 in bills for her broken wrist. Were it not for my HSA (which I have along with a high-deductible policy) that would have hurt more than just her wrist. But yeah, you make a great point here.
There's nothing wrong with cold hard cash. Just need some kind of low cost catosrophic coverage.
I could not agree yet disagree more. Taking control of your own health care costs puts the onus on the patient to shop around for reasonable health care providers and negotiate costs. Getting rid of all of the paperwork involved in billing could cut out an incredible amount of cost. Ideally, one could spend less on most months than what health insurance premiums would be, actually more likely than not you're going to save. However,having said that, having two infants in the intensive care unit for three months, there's no possible way that my health care premiums over my lifetime are going to add up to what insurance has doled out.
Prior to having children I paid over $400.00 a month for just me…it started at under $300.00 and continually increased. When my first son was born they wanted to raise it to $478.00 for me and $200.00 for him. He was perfectly healthy. I canceled it and paid for visits over the next several months. I actually found that some prescriptions were cheaper not using insurance co-pays and visits were around $60.00. So it was cheaper to go cash for a time. My son got very sick and it was at that point that I went from working part time to working full time so we would have coverage. I am blessed in that my job offers coverage but if that were not the case I would probably go cash because doctor visits are rare and there are many places that offer low cost prescriptions.