Ask Lemmy

A lot of it depends on what insurance you have and what insurance you have depends on who you work for.

I had EXCELLENT coverage with Kaiser Permanente, and other than a couple of hundred dollars a pay check and an in-office co-pay for treatment, I never had a bill.

When I had my heart attack, the Emergency Room was $150. 8 days in the hospital and open heart surgery from the head of the department was $100. The prescriptions and all the oxygen bottles I could carry was $100.

4 weeks into recovery, my company got bought. :( The new company didn't do Kaiser in Oregon. If I lived in California or Washington, I would have been fine, not Oregon.

So they switched my insurance to Aetna which meant I lost all of my doctors and had to start over at a new hospital. Kaiser is members only and I was no longer a member.

Naturally I started having complications, congestive heart failure. That was an ER visit followed by 7 days in the hospital.

Under the new insurance, they start by paying 80% and there is an out of pocket maximum of $6,500. Once you pay that, all other treatment is free the rest of the year. No co pays, nothing.

So I hit my $6,500 about 1/2 way through January. Goodbye signing bonus! But all the other complications I had the rest of the year were covered 100%.

Now... if I had NO insurance? 15 days in the hospital x 2 hospitals? Open heart surgery? All the tests and such? 24 oxygen bottles? A million dollars, maybe more?

I pay 9.79$/month for medical only, pre-tax, myself only on the plan, working for a mental healthcare nonprofit. My medical copays have been free lately for routine office visits. I have to get labs done 4 times a year for the meds I take and those have all been free so far. Because they’re classed as “preventative” to make sure nothing goes wrong with the meds, it’s free 🤷🏽‍♂️. Non preventative things have a 2000$ deductible, so I have to pay that much before medical care for the calendar year becomes free to me. That means that if I get sick in December, I have to pay 2000$to cover for December and again in January to cover for the next year.

Dental coverage is free. I pay 40$/visit as a copay for cleanings and all else (if I’m not in perfect health) I pay 30% of that bill. Recently I had periodontitis and my bill after treatment was 600$.

mine is decently inexpensive through Obamacare, and I'm in a low enough income bracket. but it still isn't ideal, I needed a sleep study. with or without my insurance it was going to cost $1,000 so I just never had it

I forget what count is taken out of my check every 2 weeks, I think it's like 50 bucks for vision/dental and my work actually fully covers medical?

Went to the ER 2 months ago due to severe dehydration because I was puking and having diarrhea everywhere almost as badly as when I was e. Coli poisoned. 2 hours in a chair getting a saline drip cost 2750ish, plus the ambulance ride of something like 3200? Wife got the special pass thing they sell for $100 that comes with 3 rides a year if you're in our county, so we only had to pay 100 for the ride but still.

Just shy of 6k to be rehydrated and told "lol no idea what caused it buddy come back during normal hours and we'll scan you" as my wife had been in earlier that day for the same issues, gotten an MRI (cat or whatever scan it is) and got told "lol idk", but her insurance covered it completely

We could do it cheaper if we did it like any other civilized country but nope, it makes someone money

idk, maybe im just fucking insane, but like, i can't run the numbers for insurance to make sense.

Unless the courts are LITERALLY broken, or the entire society will collapse without the presence of insurance, i don't think it makes much sense.

Healthcare maybe, if it worked, it doesn't though. Life insurance is fucking stupid unless you work in an dangerous job and have a family, it might be useful then, but only when you die. Car insurance is only legally required because people driving cars can't accept their own responsibility of owning a fucking car. (you could argue it's for the public good, but lets be honest, it's not) home/building insurance might make sense if you live in a suburban home and your contract doesn't change, or like actually covers what it should.

There are more insurances but i feel like you'd be a fucking dumbass to even consider those. Insurance for your business? My brother in christ this is why we invented LLCs.

Your friend should let all the Americans going into bankruptcy each year due to medical debt that they imagined it all along.

Here's my anecdote. I have Kaiser through my employer and pay about $200 a month for the best plan offered. I pay $10 for a 30 day supply of generic medication. Video/phone visits are free. I recently had to get lab work done twice and paid $90 combined for both, but I was able to just drop by whenever was convenient for me and was in and out in 10 mins. I had a mental health crisis last year and went through weeks of intensive outpatient group therapy plus months of ACT/DBT therapy all for free. My individual therapist is covered and I pay nothing. I recently had a physical exam, it was covered. Now I do have an autoimmune disorder that I do feel a bit neglected a bit by them, but I could advocate for myself more.

So from a non major life threatening emergency perspective, I feel pretty satisfied with my insurance.

I work at a large, private university health system.

Annual up front cost for insurance is $4967 for medical insurance and $609 for dental. Those cover me, my wife, and two of my three children. The insurance is a plan funded by my employer, but managed by Independence Blue Cross, AKA "Personal Choice".

There are three "tiers" of coverage.

First tier is for facilities that are part of my employer. Generally, for procedures performed at my employer's facility there is no additional charge. For a primary care provider who is part of my health system, there would be a $20 copay per visit. Specialist would also be $20, and an ER visit would be $200.

There is an "in network" tier, made up of external providers that accept personal choice. Primary care copay is $35, specialist is $50, ER $200.

The third tier is "out of network". If we see someone out of network, we would have to pay them directly, then try to get partial reimbursement from insurance.

There's also a prescription plan, but we get a discount by using the hospital's outpatient pharmacy.

Everyone always talks about the cost to give birth. All three of my kids were born at the hospital where I work, and none of the births cost us any additional money.