Member-only story
Your Super Cheap Health Care Deductible Is Too Expensive
How to find the real cost of your health plan.
For most of us, health insurance is somewhere between a persistent headache and a waking nightmare. From coverage to copays, deductibles to deadlines, the insurance industry has done a wonderful job of making people just throw up their hands in surrender.
What the insurance industry has also done is direct our focus to one number above all others: the deductible.
The deductible is the amount of money that you must pay before insurance starts covering your bills. Until you reach that level, you are responsible for 100% of the cost of your medical bills.
And that 100% responsibility is used to scare us into buying the plan with the lowest possible deduction. We think that it must be cheaper to have a $1,000 limit than a $6,000, especially when the premiums are only a few bucks cheaper.
As with most things, the direction we’re being pushed by a company is not necessarily the best option.
Impact of Deductible Level
I got married and had my first child within two years, so my insurance plan went from the simple, low cost, almost interchangeable plans offered to a single male to the complex, high cost…
