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Do you have health insurance?

ApparentHorizon

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It’s a weird gamble because you could probably get some for $250/mo at your age. So it’s a $3000 yearly expense going up against your net worth or savings or declaring bankruptcy.

sh*t, umbrella insurance is $400yr for $2-$3 million and most people don’t get that either.

It adds up. Car, renters, general liability.

But I see your point. I need to consider risk/reward scenarios more seriously. Especially going forward building something for myself, and maybe to pass on one day.

Where I got caught up was being convinced insurance is a scam. Until you need it.

Using it as a catastrophe policy rather than a maintenance plan makes a lot more sense. I've set a definitive date in early 2019 to get coverage.
 
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NanoDrake

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Who is the crazy fellow that would go without health insurance? it's a huge black swan.

When you will need one, you will regret not having one.
 

TheOwl8

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I'm surprised by the pro health insurance comments on here. Sure if you have a family it makes sense, but as a younger single guy?

Have any of you ever been in a major accident or had a chronic life threatening disease? In the US, if this happens to you, there's a high likelihood you'll be bankrupted whether you have insurance or not. The insurance company will do everything in their power not to pay your bills. Ambulance ride? Not covered. Took you to an out of network hospital? Sorry that isn't covered. Surgeon coded something incorrectly? Too bad, the insurance company deems that it wasn't a medical necessity and you're on the hook now.

Also if you don't have insurance and end up with a $100K hospital bill, you can negotiate a payment plan with the hospital. So rather than paying $400 a month to the insurance company forever, you'll be paying $400 a month to the hospital forever.

At the end of the day your in the same place.
 

AdamMaxum

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wife and kid - no insurance. the lowest plan for my income was going to cost above $1300 every month. I can't justify spending 15k-20k a year on health insurance and related costs at this point. The $1300+ doesn't even help much with medication co-pays and shi* like that. Total waste of money unless like people said, you end up with a long hospital stay or something. I'm rolling the dice this year. May change in future of course.
 
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Contrarian

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I can't get my head around the health insurance situation in the US. Some serious corporatist BS going on there.

I'm 32 and pay 480 euros/year for fully comprehensive health insurance. No deductibles. Covers up to 500k annually. Worldwide cover (except US & Canada - that would double the price even though I don't live there).

Doesn't cover my pre-existing conditions, as you'd expect. So I also pay 270/month for my medication. I just walk into the pharmacy down the road and buy it. No documentation or prescriptions needed. Need to see the doctor? Go upstairs, get seen within 15 minutes and pay him 15 euros.

I've just looked, and the same exact meds would cost $1350/month in the US. Utterly mental.

Will probably go on the BUPA Global plan when renewal time comes, even though it's 5x the price. Good to get in a great plan early when you're living the expat life. They even cover pre-existing conditions after you've been with them for a few years.

Wouldn't even dream of going without it.
 

Ashish Kulkarni

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I am in UK. I pay for my health insurance through the National Insurance part of my income. Since I am a business owner and pay myself a salary, I also pay the employer's portion of National Insurance.
 

ApparentHorizon

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I can't get my head around the health insurance situation in the US. Some serious corporatist BS going on there.

I'm 32 and pay 480 euros/year for fully comprehensive health insurance. No deductibles. Covers up to 500k annually. Worldwide cover (except US & Canada - that would double the price even though I don't live there).

Doesn't cover my pre-existing conditions, as you'd expect. So I also pay 270/month for my medication. I just walk into the pharmacy down the road and buy it. No documentation or prescriptions needed. Need to see the doctor? Go upstairs, get seen within 15 minutes and pay him 15 euros.

I've just looked, and the same exact meds would cost $1350/month in the US. Utterly mental.

Will probably go on the BUPA Global plan when renewal time comes, even though it's 5x the price. Good to get in a great plan early when you're living the expat life. They even cover pre-existing conditions after you've been with them for a few years.

Wouldn't even dream of going without it.

As bad as it may seem, the other side of the coin is excellent R&D.

9 out of the top 10 hospitals in the world are in the US. The other in France.

Most biomedical research papers come from the US by a long shot.

upload_2018-8-23_11-5-2.png


Are companies making insane profits? You bet. It's a $3T market and they're making insane investments.

Not saying what the insurance companies are doing isn't sketchy. But there's something to be said about our progress.
 
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Contrarian

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As bad as it may seem, the other side of the coin is excellent R&D.

9 out of the top 10 hospitals in the world are in the US. The other in France.

Most biomedical research papers come from the US by a long shot.

View attachment 21039


Are companies making insane profits? You bet. It's a $3T market and they're making insane investments.

Not saying what the insurance companies are doing isn't sketchy. But there's something to be said about our progress.

I've been parked in the drug discovery & development market the last few years. Definitely can't disagree with you on the R&D front.

I still don't think that comes remotely close to telling the whole story about pricing in the US healthcare system. In unregulated markets, prices go down while quality goes up. And as I understand it, you had a genuine free market health system merely decades ago, which was both affordable and excellent.
 

eliquid

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I live in Kentucky and pay for me, wife and 2 kids.

We lost our state exchange a year or 2 ago, but I buy through healthcare.gov and pay less than $600 a month total and my kids have dental with that.

I always put down I will make less in the year to get the cheaper rate, and then at tax time I pay the difference when I make more. I'd rather do this then pay the pull price monthly, but that's just me. I've been in situations before where one month I'm making $50k profit, and the next 6 months $0. So I like making up at the end of the year personally.

For dental, it's actually cheap to pay out of pocket for me and wife in cash. Same with vision.

We have hardly used our health insurance ever and it pretty much only pays for routine Dr visits and the such. You know, like if you get the flu or need a yearly checkup.

This month my wife had to go in for some routine stuff and they found a massive polyp that has to be sent off to pathology. While I have hated having insurance bc we never use it, this is one time I am glad we had it.

Hopefully, it is benign. If not, I am glad we have something this time around.

If I were you, I'd find the cheapest insurance you can get and just carry it for health. Dental and vision are cheap out of pocket unless you have something major already wrong with you.

.
 
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Rabby

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I've always kept health insurance... going without is a bad idea. Some things can cost over 1mm to treat, after all. Right now I pay $730 per month for a BCBS plan with good, full coverage. In Florida. We picked a higher out of pocket for emergency stuff, but the yearly doctor and specialist visits are still covered after a small copay (actually I would reverse that and pay for doctors and specialists myself, but they don't have plans like that anymore).

Think about insurance as part of what your employer is paying you. If someone hired me, they would pay me a few hundred dollars less per month, compared to what they otherwise would, so that they can cover my insurance. That's because the majority of people have come to expect "benefits" to come from their employer. But you can get those same benefits yourself, either as an individual (especially if you're healthy when you buy them), or as an organization when you incorporate. Sometimes you can get insurance through associations you join too. It's not something that should deter you from starting a business, in my opinion... it's just one of several things you'll have to start knowing a little more about, because an employer is not taking care of it for you.
 

amp0193

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Using it as a catastrophe policy rather than a maintenance plan makes a lot more sense. I've set a definitive date in early 2019 to get coverage.

Yes, only catastrophic.

Just get the highest deductibles you can, and the lowest premiums.

It's there to stop you from paying crazy 6 figure expenses, not for the occasional doctor visit. Just pay out of pocket for those.
 

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