First I need to tell you that my wife takes care of all the bills, and to add insult to injury, United Health Care made a mistake in their billing and explanations of what they paid. Having said that, it turns out that the surgeons bill was just about $10,000, and the hospital bill (from July 29 through Aug 7th) came to just above $85,000. With all other bills submitted for payment, the total came to, not the $200+K that I first posted, but a much more reasonable figure of roughly $114,000, and change.

Now for your answer. First of all, we have the FedEx basic health plan which uses United Health Care as their service provider, and all of the doctors and the hospital were "In Network." This means that if the hospital (for example) submits their bill for say $85K, UHC will then pay them a "reasonable and customary" fee. In this case, they paid the hospital roughly $32,000, and that closes out that portion of the bill.

As for out of pocket, we have a maximum of $3,000 per year, that we would have had to pay, except that we've already spent some out of pocket monies for doctors/meds/etc, during the first 7 months of the year, so we would have only been responsible for the difference between the $3,000 and what we had already spent in out of pocket monies. However, because of my military retirement, we have Tri-care, which is the military equivalent of UHC. Tri-care, being a our secondary insurer, Tri-care picks up the vast majority of our out of pocket. So to make a long story a little shorter, my wife tells me that the total we have had to pay for these $114,000 of services was a whopping $17. That's Seventeen Dollars. Total! If we only had the FedEx basic plan, and this event happened on January 1st, then we would have been responsible for the full $3,000. Hope that answers your question. By the way, I've been with 2 other airlines, and had a full career in data processing at a major life insurance company, and I don't feel that our health insurance is sub-standard by any means. But that's just my opinion. Perhaps for minor issues, like doctor's visits and medications, etc, it could be better, but for BIG dollar issues, life threatening issues, it seems fine to me. Insurance is not really meant for day to day expenses, but to save you from going bankrupt when something major comes along. Again just my opinion.