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To: Keith Monahan who wrote (8368)	1/23/2003 2:15:53 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

I understand that people with serious conditions can get stranded in a plan with escalating costs but this isn't the norm for most families. A young healthy family doesn't pay 20k a year for medical insurance nor should they. You insure for the thing that is the unlikely but catastrophic loss. Where people make a mistake is they pay up front for routine care that would be far cheaper paid out of pocket. You cover the inevitable and insure for the rare but expensive event. Have you considered raising your deductibles to lower the premium? Are you paying anything out of pocket? Would it be cheaper to carry major medical at a much higher deductible and pay the routine care out of pocket, in other words are you paying 18k to cover what amounts to 3-4 thousand in routine care? You could put the difference into a medical savings plan which is tax deductible. I have a friend who got downsized out a very good job. She was the big bread winner, her husband stayed home with her daughter. She and her daughter had numerous health problems, but nothing major. Over and over I saw her medical problems which were mostly chronic conditions that were environmental in nature made worse by the care she was given. The plan from her former job was excellent and covered just about everything with little or no co-pay, she was always going to the doctor for this or that. So when she left her job she chose to keep her insurance and pay the COLBRA. I thought the premium was excessive, something like $1000 a month for the three of them. She looked for new insurance but she kept looking for plans that covered everything she had covered at her current plan. When I told her she should consider ones that didn't cover dental, prescription and had a high co-pay she looked at me like I was crazy. She said, "But I need the prescription and dental, the drugs are very expensive." She could get coverage with a high deductible at a third of the cost, which meant that she would have to pay the first $2000 with a maximum out of pocket for the family of $5000. This means if she's sick a lot or has a serious illness and uses up her deductible then she still has $3000 left for prescriptions and dental. I figured what her worst year for illness cost. I ball parked it at around $7000 when she gave birth to her daughter. Most of the other years her medical bills including everything were less than $3000. So she had wanted to pay $12k/yr so she could get $3000 worth of medical bills paid for "free". It just didn't make sense. She had a lot of savings to cover this contingent medical cost yet she had a hard time accepting that she'd have to pay for insurance and then still cover part of the cost of medical care. She did wind up switching to the cheaper plan and banking the savings. What is interesting is that now that she has to pay more, she gets sick less and when she gets sick she doesn't feel like she is sick enough to go to the doctor.