60% of bankruptcies caused by medical bills

Check out this site for health insurance quotes...

http://www.ehealthinsurance.com/

My family of three ages 39, 37, and 2 here in Georgia pay $204/month for a PPO plan with Humana. It's cheap, but that is with a $7,500 deductible per person per year (with a $15,000 maximum family deductible) and 0% co-insurance, although they do cover $300 per person per year in annual physical exams and $300 per year in OB-GYN annual exams without a deductible. It has a $2 million lifetime maximum per person. We can get the $5 million lifetime maximum per person for an extra $10/month.

If we wanted a $0 deductible and 0% co-insurance plan, it would cost $1,258 per month, which means $12,648 more per year in premiums. So I went with the higher deductible, instead of paying more per year, and if nothing happens, you end up wasting all that money for nothing.
 
Quote from logikos:

I have mixed emotions of health care reform. It is needed, but government provided health care is not the answer I am looking for. If I was 10-20 years younger I would have cared less about all this goings on, but I'm no spring chicken. Half my relatives of the prior generation are dead, the rest needing frequent care. Uncle just announced he is getting a quadruple bypass at 80 years old. I guarantee under the proposed health care bill, he would be denied and left to die.

So, are our lives extended so the health-care industry can milk us of our life savings and insurance benefits, ensuring we leave nothing to our descendants?

I keep hearing that the high costs are due to "research and development" of new cures and new medications, blah blah blah. I think I would be OK where we are at now as far as medical progress goes, and leave it up to private investors to spearhead future R&D efforts instead of passing on R&D costs to everybody.
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The way healthcare should be done is to take a blood test when you are 23 or so and immortal. This test would be for things like calcium, magnesium, vitamin d, vitamin b and hormones, probably 200 things in total. If anything comes back abnormal you adjust then. After that you use this as a baseline and re test every 3 years or if you start feling bad.

If you need adjustment it can usually be done though diet or supplements, not drugs. Just doin this would cause most to be healthy well into their 70s and not cost very much.

Of course this would put most drs and drug companies out of business so it wont happen.
 
Quote from logikos:

I keep hearing that the high costs are due to "research and development" of new cures and new medications, blah blah blah. I think I would be OK where we are at now as far as medical progress goes, and leave it up to private investors to spearhead future R&D efforts instead of passing on R&D costs to everybody.
More...
R&D does cost a lot of money. Medical research is a continuous process, it shouldn't stop just because we think we are okay. How come we aren't prepared when swine flu attacked us and the whole world?

I do believe that most insurance plans are very high, however we cannot solely blame the bankruptcy to them, credit card debts are one factor too.
 
Quote from TraderTactics:

R&D does cost a lot of money. Medical research is a continuous process, it shouldn't stop just because we think we are okay. How come we aren't prepared when swine flu attacked us and the whole world?

I do believe that most insurance plans are very high, however we cannot solely blame the bankruptcy to them, credit card debts are one factor too.
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it is not insurance, it is modern medicines obsession with drugs that do not work.
 
Pretty interesting thread to me, never had an idea about numbers in the US insurance system.
I am living in Germany and working in the health system (besides trading).

In Germany you pay something like 350€/mo for a good private health insurance (1 person, 40 yr), complete coverage (100/0).

Employed people pay something like 15% of their salaries to public insurance (service slightly inferior to private insurance). Also complete coverage, no max payment.
Half of this is paid by the company where they work.


In general in Germany there are no insurances that limit payments per year or lifetime.
Also there are no conditions like 80/20 coverage.
There are policies where you have to pay up to a fixed sum (say 500-1000€) if you need the insurance at all in a year.


For me it appears that the main problem are the insurance companies in the US and that they are allowed to sell policies that can lead the customers directly to ruin.

Obviously with some major illness and the costs of modern medicine any limit that lies below several million $ can easily be reached.
Even the splitting of costs at 80/20 which looks ok at first sight may very well become dangerous.
 
Quote from uexkuell:

For me it appears that the main problem are the insurance companies in the US and that they are allowed to sell policies that can lead the customers directly to ruin.
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Exactly, the insurance companies in this country are operating under 1940 laws that were designed for non-competitive Blue Cross Blue Shield companies. It's been very lucrative for these companies to target their congressional lobbying money to preserve those anti-trust provisions. One company has 22 executives making over a million USD a year.
Meet the parasites:
Ron Williams - Aetna Total Compensation: $24,300,112
Details: Williams earned $24,300,112 in total compensation for 2008, with more than half of that ($13,537,365) coming from option awards. He also received an additional $6,456,630 in stock awards to go along with his base salary of $1,091,764.
Personal use of a corporate aircraft and vehicle, as well as financial planning and 401(k) company matches added up to $101,487 for Williams.

Parasite H. Edward Hanway - CIGNA Total Compensation: $12,236,740
Parasite Angela Braly - WellPoint Total Compensation: $9,844,212
Parasite Dale Wolf - Coventry Health Care Total Compensation: $9,047,469
Parasite Michael Neidorff - Centene Total Compensation: $8,774,483
Parasite James Carlson - AMERIGROUP Total Compensation: $5,292,546
Parasite Michael McCallister - Humana Total Compensation: $4,764,309
Parasite Jay Gellert - Health Net Total Compensation: $4,425,355
Parasite Richard Barasch - Universal American Total Compensation: $3,503,702
Parasite Stephen Hemsley - UnitedHealth Group Total Compensation: $3,241,042
 
These health insurance companies suck. The Big Bad-Ass Democrats never stood up to them for a moment. The overwhelming majority of Americans have health insurance, all the Big Bad-Ass Democrats had to do was to write some regulations to make the insurers act with some ethics and not offer products that are worthless...

LOL, Republicans might actually yet come up with Health Reform that Works....
 
Quote from uexkuell:

Pretty interesting thread to me, never had an idea about numbers in the US insurance system.
I am living in Germany and working in the health system (besides trading).

In Germany you pay something like 350€/mo for a good private health insurance (1 person, 40 yr), complete coverage (100/0).

Employed people pay something like 15% of their salaries to public insurance (service slightly inferior to private insurance). Also complete coverage, no max payment.
Half of this is paid by the company where they work.


In general in Germany there are no insurances that limit payments per year or lifetime.
Also there are no conditions like 80/20 coverage.
There are policies where you have to pay up to a fixed sum (say 500-1000€) if you need the insurance at all in a year.


For me it appears that the main problem are the insurance companies in the US and that they are allowed to sell policies that can lead the customers directly to ruin.

Obviously with some major illness and the costs of modern medicine any limit that lies below several million $ can easily be reached.
Even the splitting of costs at 80/20 which looks ok at first sight may very well become dangerous.
More...

How are pre-existing conditions treated by the German insurance companies? In the US, insurance companies are allowed to disallow someone with a pre-existing condition to even purchase insurance. Is it different in Germany?
 
Yes it's quite discriminatory in the US. Once you go private anything you say or reported is logged into a database and shared with other private insurers. When you employer insures this is not the case. If you lie they can later reverse claims. It motivates you not to go to the doctor because anything you test, report, or say is forwarded to the database.
 
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