The premium increases stem in part from rising healthcare costs, including higher prices for medical care and expensive prescription drugs.
Most Americans can expect to pay significantly more each month for health insurance next year, whether they get it through work, the Affordable Care Act or Medicare. In some cases, the premium increases may be the largest in decades and are driven by numerous economic pressures. But they won’t look the same for everyone. Some will pay more in the form of higher copays or deductibles.
“Healthcare costs are going up faster than they have in years, and open enrollment is when the healthcare affordability crisis is really going to hit home for people,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a nonpartisan research group. “That’s true for whatever kind of insurance you have.”
Prices have shifted upward in every corner of daily life.
The high deductible options offered nowadays are way too high. If I have to pay $8k towards a deductible I’ll just go to the ER and ignore the debt collectors for a few more years… I’m in my thirties, so I won’t be buying a house for at least another 20 years anyways, if ever. Credit does nothing for me.
If you go to a hospital and the hospital bills $100,000, let’s consider two scenarios:
Scenario 1: You have a high deductible health insurance place with a $10,000 deductible. The health insurance company pays $90,000 and the hospital asks you to pay the rest. Hospital bills have a lot of wiggle room and all of it is negotiable. You tell them you’re broke. In this case, the overwhelmingly likely scenario is that they’ll do something like “Okay, pay us $50 a month for a year and we’ll call it good”, because they already got the vast majority of what they were asking for from the insurance company. They have already made most of their profit. It is totally not worth it for them to even send this to collections, let alone hire a lawyer to sue you.
Scenario 2: You have no coverage. Hospital asks you for $100,000. You tell them you’re broke and will declare bankruptcy. They might offer you a plan like $200 a month for the next three years, because nobody else has paid them anything. And here’s the thing: they have leverage over you, because they know that a bankruptcy lawyer is going to ask for a $10,000 retainer paid upfront. You can’t just go up into your local courthouse and shout "I DECLARE BANKRUPCY!” in the style of The Office. Nope. You’ll just get 25% of your pay cheque garnished for the next eight to ten years because you couldn’t afford a bankruptcy lawyer to stop it. The hospital knows that they can juice $9,000 out of you or more, because you being broke also means you can’t afford a lawyer.
Anyway, you do the maths. I don’t know your financial situation and how much the insurance companies want to insure you. You make the right decision based on your situation. I’m just providing information. Maybe the maths nonetheless points you to Scenario 2 being a better bet. But it’s not as clear cut as one might initially think, so at least give it some thought and punch in some numbers into a calculator. And if you already have, more power to you.
I have nothing worth taking except my life and freedom. I was born into poverty and, despite 18 years of constantly overworking myself, that hasn’t and won’t change. The systems in place are so stacked against me that I’d rather participate in them as little as possible. I have no idea how people with tougher circumstances than me are getting by in this shithole country. I had a friend a few years older than me, with the same financial situation, who had breast cancer. She couldn’t afford to have it treated. It killed her. She was 28 at the time. If I get cancer, it’ll likely be the same for me. Best case scenario, my partner and I get some kind of inheritance from his side and we migrate to a country that takes care of its people. Maybe the US will swing back to the left at some point, and we’ll have socialized healthcare, but I’m not holding much hope for that.
You have a pay cheque, don’t you? That’s something that they would try to go for.
To be clear, I don’t defend the broken system, but I am trying to see what you can do to make the best of the crummy situation that it is.