Since my wife received a notice from BlueCross BlueShield of Texas that they are ending her health care plan effective December 31st, we've been looking at her options. BCBS of Texas is offering an almost identical plan she can sign-up for. Instead of costing the $407 a month we've been paying. They offer it at $688.91 a month; a 69% increase. Nice of them. I guess it's an offshoot of the "Unaffordable" Care Act.

An article in the Dallas Morning News this morning got me thinking and I checked-out HealthCare.gov to see what else was out there.

Looks like I might be able to knock off $60 to $120 a month by going with United Healthcare. Does anyone have any experience with this health care provider, and its EPO plans?

Kensco,

If you can get a decent plan for $690.00 a month you better go for it. I am thinking about retiring next year, if I keep the United Health Care policy I have now, it will $1650.00 a month for my wife and I.

Don't know if this has anything to do with Obama Care or not, may just be our health care system at the present time.

After struggling with three United Healthcare operators today, I'm convinced you are right. All we wanted to do was confirm two of my wife's doctors were covered in their plan. Three operators later we still couldn't get that information. I think we had Curly, Moe, and Larry on the line.

We're reluctantly going back to BCBS of Texas.

Personally, I have/use Medicare and the top of the line AARP option for Medicare supplemental insurance. All told it costs me about $150 per month and so far has paid every penny of my medical costs over the years since I became eligible for Medicare (1997).

That's a deal AC. I'm not old enough for Medicare yet. I'm only 63.

Medicare is not a problem. I've got to start marrying older women I guess.

My supplemental is BCBS of Texas at $156 a month.

I have an agent from U.H. coming to call on Wednesday that claims I can have a policy with no deduct.for $275.00 per month.Catastrophic,right? We'll see;I am a cynic by nature;when something seems too good to be true,it generally is.Tx blue cross screwed me,I am interested as well to any feedback on United Healthcare.Thanks friends.

NC,

Our office just changed to U.H. effective 01 December 2014. The policy sounds good. It's not nearly as cheap as yours.... We will see how it works.

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
Personally, I have/use Medicare and the top of the line AARP option for Medicare supplemental insurance. All told it costs me about $150 per month and so far has paid every penny of my medical costs over the years since I became eligible for Medicare (1997).

I think we're being pushed into Medicare or Obamacare or something. Kaiser doubles the rate after turning 65.

The good news is, it doesn't matter how much older than 65 you are. The bad news is, it's $20,000 a year. If you're interested in gambling a little, you can almost pay for your own cancer operation with five years worth of premiums.

I try to minimize the cost of my wife's medical insurance, by going with the highest deductible. I want her protected from a catastrophe. We'll take care of the first $6,000; and still I pay nearly $700 a month.

I gave-up on life insurance when I retired. Up until then I carried the maximum my company offered. I don't see the point now. My wife won't need my life insurance to live on.

I bought an individual life insurance policy back in 1971, when I got my first job and first wife. I paid the premiums for 39 years, watched the insurance company change ownership four times. The last evolution was a company called Reassure America Life Insurance Company. I had to report them to the Texas Attorney General's office twice when they tried to drop me illegally. It was difficult to keep up with their multiple premium increases and deadlines that arrived at unscheduled times and had to reach me overseas. They finally got lucky and because of a holiday, my unscheduled premium payment got to them a day after their "grace" period expired. They cancelled my policy. I have zero respect for insurance companies.

Kensco:

I dunno what the difference is but I've got identical BCBS health insurance on my wife and 2 female children ($6000 deductible, etc) and it costs me about $563/month. However, I think that is going up next year, not sure how much.

I frigging hate insurance companies and would not have any health insurance today if it wasn't for Obamacare. The non-compliance penalty was more than the cost of the care if you figured being insured had any value. The real value of having insurance is they negotiate "deals" with health care providers, hospitals, etc that screw individuals unmercifully if you don't have it.

The whole system sucks and a single payer is going to be the ultimate answer. Anything else is just putting off the inevitable.

quote:

The whole system sucks and a single payer is going to be the ultimate answer.

Oh dear God!


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Another deep thinker heard from......we spend substantially more per capita on health care than any other country in the world and we rank near or at the bottom of the developed world in results. So......

The US does not rank near the bottom in any meaningful way. The inequality bothers many people, but for people of means US care is by far the best. I wouldn't be alive today in any other country. People of means from all over the world come to the US for treatments unavailable anywhere else.

I'm not going to argue with you, but NUMEROUS metrics disagree with you assessment of the quality of US medical care. Certainly if you're rich, the US has some of the finest medical care. In case you haven't noticed most people aren't rich. In addition, the very fact that you check into a US hospital as a patient MEANS that you have OVER a 1 in 100 chance of dying SOLELY because you are a patient in a US hospital, totally unrelated to your reasons for admittance.

Read this

Here's another tidbit for you...

quote:

Universal coverage, in countries like the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, and Germany makes the number of bankruptcies related to medical expenses negligible. Conversely, a 2013 survey found that about three out of five bankruptcy filings in the U.S. were linked to expenses from medical bills. Prior surveys found that in 92 percent of medical bankruptcy cases, high medical bills directly contributed to the bankruptcy. At illness onset, in 77.9 percent of these cases the bankrupt party had some form of insurance.

There is no question that we spend far more and don't get better results (with some exceptions, cancer treatment being marginally better here, for example) than many other developed countries.

Finally, unless you're a psychic who can see the future and, added to that, alternative futures, then you have no real idea if you'd have been adequately treated in other countries. OTOH more than 1/6 of our total GDP (far higher than other countries) is used in the health care system and it increases faster than inflation every year. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why it is so unaffordable for many people and getting more so.

You are an obnoxious bastard!

Single payer? Gov't in charge? You think that's a viable fix? How's that working with the Post office these days? Maybe Social Security?

How about meaningful fixes like tort reform so that we need less "defensive" medicine?

1/6 of our GDP is used because we can! What other country CAN do that? How much of that 1/6 is for elective stuff.....and "defensive" medicine.

YOU can have all of the nanny state YOU want!


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quote:

Single payer? Gov't in charge? You think that's a viable fix?

In fact it is working in almost all the OECD except us. They get better results for substantially less money, both per capita and as a percentage of GDP.

I may be obnoxious in your simple view because you don't agree with my thoughts (possibly because of a lack of experience with the concept), but facts speak to those who can understand. Some can't.

And....to answer your question about defensive medicine and legal concerns....it is far less that your argument would suggest, well under 5% of total expenditures, or put in a simple way you might understand, substantially less than 1% of that 17+% (I used 1/6 so you could follow). Keep ranting, it is better than thinking in your case.

Gato
Much of the disparity between us and the OECD countries is demographics. Wait times for procedures there are also much higher. The outcome may be the same but the wait time is undesirable. I've lived near the Canadian border and the local medical providers, largely expatriate Canadian doctors, see a very high percentage of Canadian patients who elect not to wait. In my own case I've had treatments that were unavailable anywhere but in a handful of US research hospitals. Many of my fellow patients were from overseas getting treatments that were unavailable at home. I can't square that with the statistics.

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Access: Not surprisingly—given the absence of universal coverage—people in the U.S. go without needed health care because of cost more often than people do in the other countries. Americans were the most likely to say they had access problems related to cost. Patients in the U.S. have rapid access to specialized health care services; however, they are less likely to report rapid access to primary care than people in leading countries in the study. In other countries, like Canada, patients have little to no financial burden, but experience wait times for such specialized services. There is a frequent misperception that trade-offs between universal coverage and timely access to specialized services are inevitable; however, the Netherlands, U.K., and Germany provide universal coverage with low out-of-pocket costs while maintaining quick access to specialty services.

Even the Doctors know it sucks:

article

My friends from UK don't use the NHS. They pay for their own care. There must be a reason.

There is a reason(s), but the people who buy private health insurance in Great Britain are only 6.3% (or 1/16) of the population. Care to guess whether they are richer or poorer?

NEVER go by the Dr list at Obumercare. Ask your DR if he takes Gov coverage. A Doc may take UH but not Obumer UH.