Ask Lemmy

My wife recently had to get an array of bloodwork done. It was ~$700 after all of the office visits and lab stuff had been completed. And that’s all out-of-pocket, because our deductible (how much we have to pay per calendar year before insurance kicks in) is several thousand dollars. And we pay them ~$600 per month out of my paycheck for coverage, for just myself and my wife; If we ever have kids, the full family coverage (as opposed to just two people being covered) spikes up to nearly $1600 per month.

The monthly premium being $600, plus the deductible means we end up paying ~$10k per year before insurance even begins covering things. And even after the deductible, they only cover 80% of the bill, and we’re responsible for the remaining 20%. So if one of us has an extended stay in a hospital with a $150k bill, we’ll end up paying the $3k deductible, plus $29,400 (that’s 20% of the remaining $147k.)

And all of that is assuming everything is “in network”. Insurance companies have networked doctors, who have contracts with the company. If you see an out-of-network doctor, the insurance will often refuse to cover it, or cover it at a vastly reduced rate. Not-so-fun fact: Nearly all anesthesiologists are out of network, because they have a separate labor union that refuses to sign network contracts with insurance companies. So if you go into a surgery, even if you insist that every single doctor, nurse, aid, etc is in network, you’ll still always get an out-of-network bill from the anesthesiologist.

Oh, also, dental and vision are entirely separate plans. Because somewhere along the lines, insurance companies decided that you need to pay for a totally separate plan to have functioning teeth or eyes.

There’s a reason medical debt has historically been the #1 cause of bankruptcy in the US.