What are you paying for health insurance?

mjshafer62 said:
The term "disruptor" makes me cringe.
Most commonly, I associate it with unfortunate event of people losing their jobs to a new automated process.

But I'm very interested to see what happens when Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and Chase work together
to reduce healthcare costs. I'm all for them being a disruptor. Show us what combining forces can do.
The Gov't tried and it's my opinion, they had good intentions but only made it worse.
If you missed the article, here is a link
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/30/ama...se-to-partner-on-us-employee-health-care.html

I also read today where medical offices still use the fax machine as their primary medium to move medical information.
How archaic. Now, where is my IBM Selectric typewriter??
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Interesting you mention this Mark. I am a Berkshire employee as is MXFreedom33 above (unless he changed jobs).

The combined group you mention employ over 1 million people. I would guess the total coverage for that group is around 30-35 million people.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this. My health costs have been increasing every year as well. It will be interesting to see how/if this changes the landscape of health care costs.
 
AHRMA361 said:
Interesting you mention this Mark. I am a Berkshire employee as is MXFreedom33 above (unless he changed jobs).

The combined group you mention employ over 1 million people. I would guess the total coverage for that group is around 30-35 million people.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this. My health costs have been increasing every year as well. It will be interesting to see how/if this changes the landscape of health care costs.
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I am still with them, prob will be till I 1. Die 2. Get fired 3. Retire ( yea right ). Our care in the 6 years I’ve been with BH/Lubrizol have gotten more expensive while losing coverage... now with this consumer driven plan I had to jump ship... sad.
 
The idea for huge companies is going to be: go get it (health insurance) from the government if the single payer system ever takes over. When the govt has full control of healthcare nobody will have decent coverage. And nobody will want to work in healthcare anyway.

Plus it’s gonna be hard to get back to where it was before Obamacare. Damage is done. Bottom lines are set now based on the employees paying those premiums for that coverage. Even with the tax cut I doubt companies are going to be able to find (or want to find) better group coverage rates to offer. It’s a mess.

Freedom jumped ship, that’s cheaper for the company. They’re probably more glad they don’t gotta forknout the premium for you now.
 
Dano762 said:
Across premiums, putting money into our HSA, and deductible limits, my potential max out of pocket is more than a person would make working 40 hours a week earning the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 hour. Wife, son (26 in May), and me.

I guess it beats being bankrupted if I have a kidney stone.

We are essentially self insured (pay for all of our health care) unless there is a catastrophic health event.

Certain wellness checkups are covered with no co-pay or deductible.
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Dano, can you give me some more info on your plan?
 
AHRMA361 said:
Interesting you mention this Mark. I am a Berkshire employee as is MXFreedom33 above (unless he changed jobs).

The combined group you mention employ over 1 million people. I would guess the total coverage for that group is around 30-35 million people.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this. My health costs have been increasing every year as well. It will be interesting to see how/if this changes the landscape of health care costs.
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There are additional facts coming out regarding this.
From Art Cashin's Comments today, quoting Jim Brown of Option Investor about the healthcare stocks beat down yesterday

The most likely cause of the decline was simply being extremely overbought and the announcement by Amazon, JP Morgan and Berkshire that they were forming a company to provide cheaper healthcare for their 1.1 million employees. That caused the bottom to fall out in the healthcare, pharmacy and drug stocks. The carnage was deep and widespread. The goal is to reduce healthcare expenses by 20% or more. JP Morgan spent $1.2 billion on healthcare in 2017. If they were able to accomplish this feat, it would be a major blow to nearly every provider of drugs and services.
The group had to go public with their plans because they are starting a hunt for a CEO. The company will be separate and will be "ring fenced" from the parent companies to avoid conflicts of interest. That would also make it potential magnet for dozens if not hundreds of other major corporations also trying to cut expenses. Given Amazon's resources and the razor-thin margins they produce, there is a very good chance they will exceed their cost reduction goals and that could upset the entire healthcare industry.
America has the highest drug prices in the world and every drug has to go through multiple hands before it is given to you by the druggist. Some people claim there is 20-40% in costs generated by the various middlemen including distributors, wholesalers, pharmacy benefit managers, etc. With Amazon's clout, they could go direct to the manufactures and force them to bid for the business and discount their own products. Amazon disrupts. The fear of Amazon disrupting the very profitable drug pipeline business caused massive declines in the various stocks.
 
We may be looking to get on the exchange for a single payer Healthnplan. Does anyone on here have privately held health care through the exchanges???
 
beenridin said:
We may be looking to get on the exchange for a single payer Healthnplan. Does anyone on here have privately held health care through the exchanges???
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Those are high deductible and high max out of pocket plans that the government subsidizes based off income. So they’re really damn expensive for people that make a decent coin and don’t provide much affordable coverage. It helped about 20,000,000 citizens at the expense of the other 290,000,000 citizens in this country....
 
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I pay about $400 a month with a $1500 deductible. Trouble here is that the two local hospitals are owned by different insurance companies. They don't get along and next year you will only be able to go to the one that you have insurance with. No more choice, I am going to have to pick a new family doctor, I've had mine for over 20 years.
 
alphado said:
I pay about $400 a month with a $1500 deductible. Trouble here is that the two local hospitals are owned by different insurance companies. They don't get along and next year you will only be able to go to the one that you have insurance with. No more choice, I am going to have to pick a new family doctor, I've had mine for over 20 years.
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Wait a minute..... “you can keep your doctor ? You can keep your health care plan....”

We were supposed to get EXPANDED choices...but now they’re actually being limited? What else is gonna go wrong here.

And you’re playing fantasy sx right alphado? How’s your son is he a pro hockey player yet ?
 
No fantasy SX. Joe is 16 and really into ROTC at school, think he is headed to the military. The little one is 13 and playing hockey still, he plays soccer and football too, like chasing girls.
 
I hate insurance. The benefit package with the new company in Georgia is amazing so that did play into my discussion.
The healthcare costs are out of control. Insurance company can charge anything they want because the government makes everybody buy so they can charge what ever they want. People have to take it.
Yesterday should have been a big lesson for the lazy, government should take care of me and everything with your tax money. A private company takes over where NASA left off and just for shits and giggles sends a robot sitting in a car on the end of a rocket to Mars and does it all for less then NASA paid for the development of the toilet on the space shuttle.
Government should get out of “business”.
 
I pay $562 a month for medical(wife, 2 adult kids) $78 per month for dental and like $18 for vision. 80/20, deductible $525 individual, $1050 family. Out of pocket max is $4000 individual, $8000 family not including a bunch of crap. Seems right because I remember one year where we had some hospital time I figured we spent $18K on all of it total.

That's alright the guy that worked in the public sector that bought the toilet for the space shuttle doesn't pay crap for his healthcare-our taxes do. Our costs will continue to go up until the people making all the decisions live like the rest of us do on the benefit side. I am certain we would all be in a much better spot if they had plans and costs like we do.
 
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Eh...I work for the fed now.(can’t beat the bastards, join em...to a point) I still pay around 220-250 a biweekly period for health insurance.


Quite the contrary...We have the best healthcare system in the world. People from every country come here. Rich, poor, middle...everyone. Nobody’s flying to Sweden to get their great healthcare like colleges and media want you to believe. Great, quality care is very expensive now that people expect to get it for free....

Even with all the people that scam the system, hospitals are still posting profit....kinda says to me we are got the best system in the world. But the more we squeeze out of the hospital employees nurses and surgeons the quality will fizzle out because we will leave the profession. Profit isn’t a bad thing. It keeps new innovation in surgery.

Colleges charging $100,000 for a degree is the real scam. If healthcare costs were as inflated as college education costs since the 70s....then you’d really see what a totalitarian “no healthcare for the common man regimen” looks like....Hopefully it doesn’t get that far.
 
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Then why are some many hospitals closing or already closed if they're profiting? I know around here Affinity is closing. They already tried but were ordered to stay open.
 
I worded that wrong as far as what she said and should have put insurance after healthcare - I can see why you may have taken it as you did Georgie. This was in no way intended to be the quality of those in the profession or the facilities. I was completely talking about what it costs all of us and it just keeps going up. We have awesome doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc.

I still don't think some on the public side pay near what most of do.
 
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Motodad23 said:
Then why are some many hospitals closing or already closed if they're profiting? I know around here Affinity is closing. They already tried but were ordered to stay open.
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Because big fish can feed off the small fish when the small fish are scrounging for extinct krill (krill=middle class paying patients) . (Thank regulation for that)

I know some smaller hospitals the Cleveland clinic bought out post loss after loss after loss but the mother ship ( main campus ) keeps em a-float. And when the small hospital is about to die, CCF sweeps in to save the day, buys the Hospital, busts up the unions, and forces the people In that small area to change their doctor. Big Corps and big govt are in bed together. It’s the most bizarre thing. I Don’t know how to fix it.
 
BILL88L said:
I still don't think some on the public side pay near what most of do.
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Oh they do. But they pay with YOUR money. Another bizarre thing. Ha. I think by the time I retire there won’t be any incentive to get a medical degree or an advanced nursing degree. Debt will just swallow them whole. And then on the flip side they won’t be able to afford quality health insurance either. So you’ll have yo-yos taking care of...yo-yos. And 536 other people in a nice cathedral building will still be bantering about bipartisanism and paying what’s left of the geniuses to take care of themselves only at Walter Reid hospital in DC. !!!!

You’re right tho. There’s a many sucking up resources for what’s left of the few. (If that makes sense) bigger the govt gets and the bigger the corps get it just slices up the rest of us.
 
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