health insurance

In reply to wae:

I am glad someone got that reference...........on that note

I have paid $0 for my entire career. It's the one thing that I am pretty lucky about. My employer's rates are going up a lot though. : (

In reply to pinchvalve:

do you mean that your employer bears the cost of your insurance?

Cone_Junkie wrote: Anybody here that had their current plan go up check the marketplace for a (cheaper) replacement plan? I'm curious if there are cheaper options out there that haven't been investigated. Just because your old plan went up doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have a cheaper option.

So far, I've run into errors every time I've tried.

Surprisingly, this was the first year in a while our company's plan didn't go up. Same as last year.

My school's plan went up, but so did the coverage (as required by the ACA). Not too much, maybe $50 a month increase?

Thank god I work for the grand poobah of good-guy giant evil corporations.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.

All the people with rate increases-does your state support the law?

Seems to be the deciding factor...

We've had plenty of huge increases in the past, prior to the health care reform. (sub-$400/mo policy is now close to $800/mo, and all the big increases were prior to 2008.) Amazingly enough the rates went DOWN this year for the first time ever, in order to comply with the 80% rule (80% of premiums are required to be directly spent on health care costs) and we got a small refund on last year's premiums.

This is in Ohio, which I believe does not participate in the health care exchange.

In reply to Cone_Junkie:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/04/49-state-analysis-obamacare-to-increase-individual-market-premiums-by-avg-of-41-subsidies-flow-to-elderly/

Look's like your state of California supported it but still has increases. My options and rates from my employer are actually staying the same for the 5th straight year. I was surprised.

In reply to Fletch1:

I know we lost our PPO option for 2014. I thought it was great because I never had to pay a copay, but I always got plenty of bills well after the treatment. I'll see if having just an HMO this year will make a noticeable change in how much we pay in medical bills.

Upper and lower Lumbar injections, physical therapy, and seeing multiple specialists has drained my accounts over the last few years.

100,000 enrolled.

5 million cancellations.

SUCCESS!!!

poopshovel wrote: 100,000 enrolled. 5 million cancellations. SUCCESS!!!

You are clearly racist.

poopshovel wrote: 100,000 enrolled. 5 million cancellations. SUCCESS!!!

"That's not a bug, that's a feature."

I think my current plan was going up 20%, so I took the new higher deductible HSA option (was already on an HSA but the new deductible is 2x the plan I have through the end of the year).

So since taking the higher deductible plan, which I'm OK with at 31 and the wife 28, my new plan will be 50% off.

But because I'm willing to cover a larger portion of a catastrophic event.

Cone_Junkie wrote: In reply to Fletch1: Upper and lower Lumbar injections, physical therapy, and seeing multiple specialists has drained my accounts over the last few years.

How have the injections been working? One of the wife's docs has recommended them but she is a bit hesitant to try them.

Wally wrote:

Cone_Junkie wrote: In reply to Fletch1: Upper and lower Lumbar injections, physical therapy, and seeing multiple specialists has drained my accounts over the last few years.

How have the injections been working? One of the wife's docs has recommended them but she is a bit hesitant to try them.

Unfortunately not well. Longest they've lasted is two weeks and as short as 3 days. Although the few uninterrupted nights of sleep were nice

They say they can last up to 6 months. If they lasted that long for me it would be worth the discomfort of having a large needle jammed into my spine.

Was going to try the next step, Radio Frequency Ablation (RFA), but the diagnostic shots I got before hand made me feel like I took a baseball bat to my lower spine. Your (her) results may vary.

In reply to Cone_Junkie:

Are you talking about shots for pain and burning nerves (RFA)? If so, my mom has been dealing with this for a few years and goes to have her nerves burned next week (RFA?).

Shots for pain, shots for deadening nerves, and shots to control swelling in my herniated disks. The RFA is used to sever the nerve on a longer term basis. I can deal with the back pain a lot better than the nerve pain. But because of my reaction to the "diagnostic block", apparently I'm not a good candidate for the RFA.

Vicoprofin (Vicodin+ibuprofen) is my only savior nowadays.

I remember my mom having those diagnostic shots last month. The bad thing is her stomach can't hack medicine, including pain medicine

SnowMongoose wrote: Thank god I work for the grand poobah of good-guy giant evil corporations. Welcome to Costco, I love you.

I've never thought about it before, but we do have two stores within an hour drive from me.

It can't be worse than my current work environment.

She has bone spurs in her hips that never bothered her before but when she started to regain feeling in her right side the caused a lot of pain. This caused her to walk funny to compensate for it and sprain her hip. The thought is that if the pain blockers work we can get her to walk properly when she's not in pain, and ultimately if it does work she will get the RFA done. The docs think that there is a good chance it will work since she responded very well to acupuncture for some of the symptoms but for the last month and a half she's had a bad virus and then a kidney infection so they haven't been able to try.

I am glad I kept my job, I could make more doing other things but for now the insurance is still reasonably priced and have covered most of this.

Wally wrote: I am glad I kept my job, I could make more doing other things but for now the insurance is still reasonably priced and have covered most of this.

I feel this everyday. My pay may be low, but my quality of life is high. It is a worthy compromise.

i work for coca-cola, and my HDHP went from $24 a week to $42. And my OOP doubled. so im adding $2500 EXTRA to my HSA to cover my OOP. i have small children (16 MO twins), so im always a phone call away from $100,000 in medical debt.

at $26 an hour, minus health care and other deductions, im close to the poverty line. in contrast, my dad was border line RICH on $15.00 an hour in the 90's...

oh well. ill just keep on keepin on i suppose...

-J0N cough -crap...that'll cost me a hundred bucks...

In reply to Mitchell: The sad part is the money I make here would be big money inmost of the country. We should have left New York years ago.