HEALTH INSURANCE

[Cracker]

My personal opinion (just to keep my ass outta trouble):

Always minimize your taxes.

Avoidance is legal.

Evasion is not.

As a CPA, I am conservative.

As a tax preparer, I am liberal.

Yes, Virginia - there are two sets of books.

That was awesomeness!

I'm probably screwed this year. We were all pretty healthy (no surgeries to deduct).

I got audited last year (success on my part! hah! effen Georgia), so I know they watch that shit. All I had to do was fax off my receipts. It really wasn't that bad.

Duchess, I think you can find a better premium. It would be worth your time to at least check with your current land carriers to see if they can offer you a better deal.

[thekid65]

Eighteen thousand dollars a year for two healthy people.

Damn Duchess...if ya wanted to get fucked, you could have given me a call and I would have obliged for free.

[Maggot]

Cash is King. I hate the thought of a cashless society.

[Duchess]

Duchess, I think you can find a better premium.

I've looked & looked and looked some more. That is no exaggeration.

I just needed people to see my pain & acknowledge it. Hahaha! I feel so much better now. Thank you all for letting me use you.

[Duchess]

Damn Duchess...if ya wanted to get fucked, you could have given me a call and I would have obliged for free.

I would have had to charge YOU and put it towards the cost of my insurance.

[IMaDick]

Otherwise it can feel like a waste of money.

Eighteen thousand dollars a year for two healthy people.

You could pay a hospital half that amount per year and they would be happy.

Do your own medical savings plan and screw the insurance company.

You know that when you tell the doctors and hospitals that you will be paying cash they cut the costs of the service?

If more people would do this insurance rates would come down, way down.

Not to mention that you can skim the interest for your own use if you want to.

[username]

That's insane, Duchess. I'm not exactly sure what we pay (it comes out of my husband's check pre-tax) but I think it's probably around $700 a month for the 4 of us. We have an Aetna PPO plan. It's a good plan (as far as insurance goes right now).

Shortly after my kids were born, they both ended up in intensive care (my daughter for 14 days). Anyway, when all was said and done the costs were over $450k...we paid about $1,000. Insurance was good then.

[Lady Cop]

Eighteen thousand dollars a year for two healthy people. [/i][/size]

you have got to be kidding! that's insane! dump that and just make them take care of you in the ER like all the welfare and illegals do.
i am in shock that you would even pay that.

[QueenBee]

I am on my husband's policy through his work..he has no payroll deduction for carrying me. We are with MVP and it is actually not bad. His company just switched last year. Cool thing is, between the two of us, we are going for routine bloodwork several times a year..and NO $25 co-pays for them. And they footed the whole bill for my up yer astomy last year.
On another note..a friend just had to turn down a job offer because the insurance sucked. He is diabetic, and recently had heart surgery to have stents put in. Insurance comp for new job said they would not cover hospitalization for any future heart or diabetes problems because they were pre-existing conditions. WTF happened to doing away with the pre existing condition clause?

[FAHQTOO]

Damnnn.................I guess I'm one lucky bitch when it comes to the cost of my insurance. I pay $36 BI-WEEKLY for ⁸⁰⁄₂₀ with a $500 deductible. $30 office co-pay and $30 for non-generic prescriptions. It would be even less if I quit smoking. $11 bi-weekly for dental, and $3.00 bi-weekly for vision. We just did our open enrollment last month and nothing went up this year.

[Maggot]

Most companies will pay 80% but just imagine paying that total 100% without help from an employer. I guess if the employer is the government and collective bargaining is not adopted then government employees will have to pay "gasp" 10% leaving the government "you the taxpayer" paying the rest. If everyone including government employees and union and private business paid only 50% there would be enough to fund S.S. medicare and medicaid. Obamacare would not be needed. That would be about 180.00 per week. This new health care program will fleece the people who work to take care of anyone that does not. Destroying any and all private insurance companies over the coarse of 10 years. Leaving the government in charge of what doctor you deserve. Taking considerably more than 180.00 per week for a family plan.
Yup..........We are all fucked.

Also cash for clunkers is coming back, but you will have to buy the "Volt" GM's piece of shit electric car. Amazing is'nt it?

[Methusala]

In my MBA classes years ago, one of my professors, who was also Dean of the College of Business Administration, repeatedly stressed that the privilege of receiving recognition as a corporate entity is intended to be reserved to those industries whose creation will serve the public interest.

Our so-called "Health Insurance" industry cannot meet that test to justify its existence. One need only compare the statistics on administrative cost of Medicare vs private health insurance plans to see that unconscionable portions of the money paid in for premiums is not paid out for benefits, even under some of the older and more conservative studies.
http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/resour...lPaper.pdf

Instead, it is diverted into lavishly excessive profits and compensation, which translates into higher and higher premium costs.

In my earlier career, I put myself through graduate school working fulltime for an insurance company. It became apparent to me that compensation was in direct proportion to how much of the reserves one could find a way to avoid paying out to claimants.

Our health insurance industry does not provide any public benefit. It exists solely to divert a large portion of premiums towards fat profits and salaries and bonuses and stock options for those clever enough to keep coming up with ways to screw the policyholders who become ill.

There are legitimate insurance industries, which spread the risk of other perils in our lives among us, with a reasonable profit, e.g. auto and life and fire insurance. The Health insurance industry is not one of these. How convenient for them that they have such surpluses that they can afford to buy members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

[username]

In my MBA classes years ago...

In my earlier career, I put myself through graduate school working fulltime for an insurance company.

[Cracker]

Please don't read the bullshit I posted earlier today. I already realize...

[ramseycat]

I work for a freakin insurance company and have crappy insurance. When I had kidney stones and had to have surgery it cost me about $2000. I need to have a hysterectomy at some point but keep putting it off because it's going to cost me about $4k. I am glad I have insurance but at the same time, it's so freakin expensive.

[Methusala]

… This new health care program … Leaving the government in charge of what doctor you deserve.…

This is a myth the Health Insurance Industry kept repeating until the public started believing it too and took up the chant.

My real world experience has been quite the opposite. Before I was retired I had Blue Cross Blue shield coverage and had to be sure my doctors were in their network, which drove me and my associates nuts because doctors kept drifting in and out of their network and we had to keep consulting the thick revised lists they constantly mailed out to us.

Now I have been on Medicare for years and am never told what doctor or specialist I can go to, and I am free to go to any doctor I want.

Why do people keep chanting that under so-called Obamacare the government will be in charge of what doctor you can go to when this have never been true under Medicare?

Simply because the health insurance industry has spent millions spreading this lie which has no basis in fact, and drilling it into your heads.