Choosing not to have health insurance

[niener]

The "I have a very healthy lifestyle and I drive safely" comment makes me see red. Cancer doesn't give a shit how many times per week you go to the gym. Viruses, bacterial infections, even those can turn into very serious situations regardless of your health. The drunk driver that swerves across the median isn't going to avoid you because you look like a safe driver, or the 18-wheeler that's just locked up behind you isn't going to magically stop careening right for the back of your car when you have to stop abruptly. The author is delusional.

That said, there was a period of about a year when I didn't have health insurance and it was very stressful. I was under no delusion that I was immune to anything, but at the time I didn't think there was anything I could do about it. I didn't know what catastrophic health insurance was, I'd never heard of it, I just knew I couldn't remotely afford standard coverage. Thankfully I made it through that year without incident, but I consider myself to be pretty lucky.

I think scrub-jay put it well (shocker ). Choosing to forgo coverage is a huge risk, both personally and for all of us who end up footing the bill. It's one of the big reasons (maybe THE reason) why our system is so effed up and isn't sustainable. Abuse of the ED is rampant. At my last job, I worked on clinical trials that recruited subjects out of the ED. The number of "regulars" were astounding. These people didn't have a PCP but they came to the ED once every few months, and naturally they didn't pay a dime. But when you asked them they said "well it could take a week to get in to see a regular doctor, but I come down here and they see me now". And he wonders why his friend's ED bill was so high...


ETA: I have no idea why the word "stop" shows up as a smiley but I can't seem to turn it off!

ETA2: OMG what is going on?! S T O P

[JaneDoe]

This annoys me too. In addition to draining the system, it just irks me that his neighbor blames the $2900+ bill on the doctor. I'm guessing that approximately only $400 (at most) of the $2900+ charge is the physician's fee. The remainder of that charge is the facility fee. Sad. Sad.

[niener]

I have no problem with people refusing to be medically insured, provided they have saved enough money to cover their own medical expenses in the future. Just as life insurance is the temporary savings plan of those who haven't saved enough, so I believe medical insurance should be treated.

This brings up a good point. Did the author actually *save* that $100k and put it in a fund somewhere to cover him if something were to happen, or did he "save" it like "woohoo, I saved $300 this month by not paying for health insurance"? To me he makes it sound like the latter.

[GrayMatterWife]

I have no problem with people refusing to be medically insured, provided they have saved enough money to cover their own medical expenses in the future. Just as life insurance is the temporary savings plan of those who haven't saved enough, so I believe medical insurance should be treated.

Deliberately pawning off your medical expenses for taxpayers (ie me) to cover is wrong and harmful to the true charity cases.

Agree. I have no problem if people want to self-insure. But, like any corporation that self-insures, you have to have the liquidity to do that.

[GrayMatterWife]

...their focus on getting federal loan money at the expense of their students (and their faculty!) is pretty sickening. I'm not at all shocked that people coming out of those schools end up in bankruptcy.

Correct. That is their business model. I'm not saying that they don't provide training. I'm just saying that the training they do provide is not rationally priced based on their costs and the possible jobs their graduates can get (and their pay). These schools charge basically the maximum amount that can be taken out in federal loans.

[oceanchild]

Aside: are there good resources out there for finding a catastrophic insurance plan? I need to get on my sister's case about this.

[scrub-jay]

Aside: are there good resources out there for finding a catastrophic insurance plan? I need to get on my sister's case about this.

Immediately I assume? And where is she? Some of the ACA provisions may help, but it is location and situation (age/income/etc) dependent in many cases right now. Please PM me & I'll see what I can find. There are some good resources out there, but will be better soon.

[SuzySunshine]

He's saved $100K but has he REALLY saved it - is it sitting in an account somewhere he can access? I'm guessing NOT! Which means when he is in a car accident or something as severe the taxpayers will pick up his insurance or he will be bankrupt and then it will be ALL the docs/hospital's fault.

UGH!

[scrub-jay]

He's saved $100K but has he REALLY saved it - is it sitting in an account somewhere he can access? I'm guessing NOT! Which means when he is in a car accident or something as severe the taxpayers will pick up his insurance or he will be bankrupt and then it will be ALL the docs/hospital's fault.

UGH!

True! And - is he really *willing* to spend it on his health care expenses or is that his entire life savings that he really isn't willing to spend?

[MsSassyBaskets]

He's saved $100K but has he REALLY saved it - is it sitting in an account somewhere he can access?

Besides that, $100k isn't going to get you that far in a truly catastrophic situation. A guy I went to college with was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 30 - no family history or other risk factors. His insurance lifetime cap (pre-Obamacare) was $300k -- and this wasn't his choice, it was a graduate school insurance plan and he couldn't afford any other. He hit the cap pretty quickly with some aggressive surgeries and chemo, lost his insurance, and then had to go on a fundraising campaign to cover the approximately $100k of treatment between when his insurance dropped him and when Obamacare took effect this summer and gave him his insurance back. That $100k was for about 6 months of treatment.

[spotty_dog]

I have no problem with people refusing to be medically insured, provided they have saved enough money to cover their own medical expenses in the future. Just as life insurance is the temporary savings plan of those who haven't saved enough, so I believe medical insurance should be treated.

And yet, as a household in the top ~5% of American incomes, and having saved a pretty decent net worth so far, I still don't think that we have the resources to self-insure and thus I have to extrapolate that the vast, vast majority of Americans would, like us, suffer in the case of an illness costing hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars over their lifetime. We will drop life insurance in a few decades when we can self-insure against the loss of my husband's income. I don't think we'll ever drop our high-deductible health plan, because even if we had the money in the bank I can't imagine that's how we'd choose to drain our savings if we could avoid it by paying a few hundred dollars a month.

Speaking of which, our HDHP premiums are under $5K per year for a family of four. I strongly doubt that the gentleman in question "saved $100K in 10 years" by not having *any* insurance.

[Deebs]

We would save $100,000 in 10 years by having no health insurance (actually more), and we utilize very little in the way of healthcare. However, DH has seen many people who were "healthy" and ended up needing crazy mess in the ED that cost in the six figures themselves. That's without any facility charge, ICU stay, physician fee, etc. obviously that's the extreme in pharm costs, but it does happen, and not as infrequently as people would think. Those are the reasons we have insurance. And, while we rarely utilize much, each of my c-sections would have been over $20,000 all told (so $60,000 for all three kids. Right there we would've wiped out half of a $100,000 medical account.

[corn poffi]

This guy is a dumbass. My dad had a physical and his doc told him that he was one of the healthiest people he's ever seen at his age. A week later, he had a stroke due to a brain condition that nobody would have ever found during routine checkups. He was hospitalized 5 times afterward. If he didn't have insurance, he would have been SOL.