Is Keeping Your Insurance And Therefore Doctor Important?

My go-to criticism is that it costs me $1800+/month for a bronze level plan.

 

True story.

I have always been covered with health insurance by my employer. My employer has to renew their health insurance contracts every other year or so. When they do, it is a 50/50 proposition whether there is a change. Between my employer changing my available health insurance plans or me changing employers, I have learned to be flexible about who my primary care doctor is.

 

How are your deductibles when you have to actually use your insurance?

My brother has a mild case of osteogenesis imperfecta. He's on his first employer subsidized plan as a computer engineer from his first job out of college and the deductibles are atrocious. The worst is how the deducatbles reset right at the end of the year. He tore his ACL at the end of December and paid 2000 in deductibles just for a ******* MRI and visit by a specialist. Now it's January and he has to pay another 2000 just for the surgery.

4000 dollars for an acl tear when he has health insurance subsidized by his employer. That's back breaking for someone with a fresh engineering job out of college.

These plans to me are **** once you actually have use your healthcare.

 

Knock on wood. I have not had many big medical procedures. Most of my payouts have been co-pays (< $50) for doctor visits.

I did have surgery to fix my umbilical hernia. It was done outpatient. I was in and out in less than 3 hours or so. The total hospital bill was a shocking $15K. My out of pocket was < $1K.

 

Right now with one of those private insurance plans through my employer that apparently people love, I had to also choose the bronze option that still costs me about as much as my mortgage just in health INSURANCE costs before anything else I have to pay for.

I also have to stay in network with select doctors in my area and dentists (which are much harder to come by on my plan). So yeah first off... my plan sucks and is laughably not affordable.

To the question - Is keeping our doctor important when changing or being forced to change plans like I just went through??

Sort of. I think the more important issue is “in network” and making sure that whatever plan you are on has an extensive network that isn’t tight like the current HMO dental plan I’m on. Medicare for all is as popular of a proposal it is mostly because people have experienced it or know someone who has experienced it and knows it has a pretty much standard network. So people aren’t worried they’ll have to go to some FEMA tent in the abandoned Greenspoint Mall parking lot to get a flu shot.

I think that’s the misconception about M4A or Obamacare back in the day. The right would lead you to believe you’ll have to drive your butt off of Woodlands Parkway... get on I-45 and have to go to some dingy 3rd world clinic or FEMA tent at Greenspoint. The fact is doctors will need to stay in business too and it will affect them almost not at all to stay accepting of Medicare.

 

Yes, this is old data but I doubt it has changed much.

https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Forms-Reports-and-Other-Resources/preexisting