Originally Posted by
Kellwolf
I'm curious as to what people think is a valid alternative.
We're not where we should be on heath care, but I hear a lot of people say "It sucks" but then don't have an idea of what it should look like. More company contribution on premiums? That won't change your out of pocket expense outside of premiums, though. Maybe more options, I guess. A lot of guys knee jerk and say "What Delta has," but Delta has several options to choose from. One of which is pretty close to what we have.
If you game the system (ie pay attention to Healthy Rewards stuff and keep track of your claims), it's not nearly the horrific system guys say it is. If guys are running up bills of over $10k, they're either going out of network (which getting better insurance won't fix as ALL insurance ding you on that), they're including their premiums in the figure (which again, all insurance carriers charge premiums, and the better it is the higher the premium) or they really don't know and are just complaining.
I've gotten to know our health care plan QUITE well over the past year. I have to say, it's not too bad. We hit our max out of pocket last year, and we've already hit it this year. I'm not having to rob banks to pay for everything. I even hit the health care markets just to see if I could beat what we had with something else thanks to the ACA. Nope. Everything there cost more than what I had.
So, I guess my question to everyone that complains about the health care is what's your solution?
There is a lot of very inaccurate info in your post. To say that it's not that bad is the understatement of the year. I'm gonna guess you weren't here before we got this new plan, but my max OOP wasn't near $13k. Delta and SWA have a plan very similar to ours, the difference? They pay about $11/mo for their premiums instead of my $304, plus they have OPTIONS to give guys a low deductible PPO that won't hurt guys who have chronic health problems in their family. I usually like your posts but this is way off mark and btw you can easily go past $10k in-network as we have done, so even with healthy rewards and seed money (that's not guaranteed) my max OOP will be about $11,000. Plus I am tired having to fight almost every medical bill I get to have insurance pay it, even stuff covered 100% like routine physicals they don't want to pay unless you jump through hoops. It wasn't like that a few years ago. There have been options presented by the PVC like a PPO, but since it was money related it was shot down. So yes it's as bad as people say, but hey it better than Pinnacle right?