Distressed baby causes healthcare plan to rise

[Ground_Meat]

and may impact Christmas bonuses next year.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double...s_talking.html

"If you like your plan, you can keep it!"

[McCarthy12]

This article makes me sick. We had a baby spend the first few weeks of his life in the NICU. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life and, yet, it was probably 1/1000 as traumatic as what this family endured. We had decent health insurance but between that and the skull surgery our son needed at 4 months, it still just about wiped out our entire savings. During this time my employer (a small business) was extremely generous towards my family. The fact that a CEO of a billion dollar company could publicly use one of his own employee's suffering as an excuse to cut benefits is disgusting. Although, having spent the last year and change working in corporate America, it is not at all surprising.

[Eagle Road]

interesting can you cite a few examples better yet specific examples of the family plans increasing rates rates

interesting can you cite a few specific examples for deductibles doubling

Sure I can, as far as family plan rate increases go, my office manager's husband works for what is probably the largest natural gas supplier in Kansas, perhaps the midwest.

They employ well over 10 thousand people, they always had one of if not the best HC plan around. They were given notice at the end of last year that because of changes in HC they were going to have to raise not only the family plan rate, but also the employee contribution portion.

This was going to be ramped up four stages (a raise every quarter) so as not to be such a shock come next year when large corporations were having to adhere to or get rolled into ACA, NOW, with that said, I don't know what is going to happen now that the administration has again delayed large corp. participation.

As far as deductibles doubling, I belong to a small business owners group here in Kansas, for the most part we were all self insured, in fact most of us had a very similar "small business" plan that BCBS of Kansas had out.

Because that plan was dropped because of ACA, myself, and everyone else that I had spoken with HC deductibles have doubled or more than doubled, or there premiums have gone up substantially.

This was because in my case, in order to keep HC premiums about the same monthly cost, I ( and most others) had to assume a higher deductible, it was either that, or I could have kept the "around" the same deductible and had my monthly premiums double, there was no good answer.

In my case, the premium went from around 800.00 per month with a 3,000 ded. to over a 1000.00 per month with a 6,000 deductible.

We also pay more for meds now because it is now a co-pay. On top of that, because we live in BFE, some of our reg. doctors are not on the "list" which means a three hour drive to Topeka.

These are just my first hand real life experiences, but if you do a search you will come up with many more. What I was getting at was I think a lot of people in the event of a medical issue are going to have to break the bank in order to meet the deductible until ins. kicks in.



But hey, at almost 60 years old we do have maternity now!

[Ground_Meat]

ER, someone has to pay for the millions who don't have healthcare. It's YOU.

[Eagle Road]

ER, someone has to pay for the millions who don't have healthcare. It's YOU.

Yeah GM, it's going to be all of us, but here is the rub as I see it, ok, your HC premiums go up, that should cover something, your deductibles doubled, that HAS to equate to a huge amount of money left on the table.

If the government was so concerned about the people without insurance they should have just offered a gov. subsidized program for that group.

It could have been done in much the same way the gov. insures flood plains, and people that build right next to the ocean, they can't get reg. insurance because of the risk, but they can get a gov. subsided program.

We still all pay for it in the end, but it doesn't uproot everybody else's policies.

[AnnapolisEagle]

This article makes me sick. We had a baby spend the first few weeks of his life in the NICU. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life and, yet, it was probably 1/1000 as traumatic as what this family endured. We had decent health insurance but between that and the skull surgery our son needed at 4 months, it still just about wiped out our entire savings. During this time my employer (a small business) was extremely generous towards my family. The fact that a CEO of a billion dollar company could publicly use one of his own employee's suffering as an excuse to cut benefits is disgusting. Although, having spent the last year and change working in corporate America, it is not at all surprising.

What's really galling is that this comes at a time when corporations are doing VERY WELL.

Shit costs money, I get that. But corporations cry poverty about stuff like this because they have to hit their earnings targets or share prices drop and everyone loses their minds. Even hitting earnings targets isn't enough, sometimes.

[Ground_Meat]

Yeah GM, it's going to be all of us, but here is the rub as I see it, ok, your HC premiums go up, that should cover something, your deductibles doubled, that HAS to equate to a huge amount of money left on the table.

If the government was so concerned about the people without insurance they should have just offered a gov. subsidized program for that group.

It could have been done in much the same way the gov. insures flood plains, and people that build right next to the ocean, they can't get reg. insurance because of the risk, but they can get a gov. subsided program.

We still all pay for it in the end, but it doesn't uproot everybody else's policies.

I have a theory on this that I won't share on the bored...I would be stoned to death by many of it's members...

[Eagle Road]

I have a theory on this that I won't share on the bored...I would be stoned to death by many of it's members...

Understand completely.