Hoyt Ag said:
YouBet said:
We will have UHC within 10 years.
Medical tourism will continue to skyrocket. I've had several procedures done outside the US for far cheaper and same quality of care.
Very high quality US based concierge medicine is now on par or cheaper than holding an insurance plan if you are healthy and do not expect anything major to happen. It wasn't but a couple of years ago that concierge was generally more expensive.
The problem is that we are in this gray area now where speciality care / catastrophic care has no dedicated plan. You are effectively forced to get "all-in" insurance to cover that part of it so you then end up double dipping on costs.
Example: wife and I pay $7-10k annually for our primary care which includes everything you get with normal annual plus head to toe derm check, stress test, body scan for cancer and heart, eyes, ears, mammograms, diet consult. Total price depends on which of these a al carte options you want to add to the base but max is going to be about $10K for both of us if we opt into everything. And then any prescriptions that come out of this are done through private pharmacies which generally results in cheaper prices there as well. So, our primary care docs are concierge and cash out of pocket.
However, if I need a speciality procedure, or ER visit, or hospitalization I have to supplement the concierge with something. There are no real catastrophic insurance plans out there and many speciality doctors actually won't take cash - I've tried. They will only take insurance. That is insane to me but that's where we are. So, I have supplemented our concierge spend with insurance I found from an insurance broker that specializes in small business, early retirees...people that don't have a corporate plan or too young for Medicare. That's another $12K per year in premiums just to cover us for anything beyond preventative.
That puts us at $22K per year in premiums before touching deductible. However, my "supplemental" insurance is still cheaper than Obamacare with much better coverage.
Other option: there is also Medishare which someone else mentioned but that's a little more sketchy but far less cheaper - about $4,500 per year. It's not really insurance though; it's basically crowd sourced paying of health procedures. I joined that first before finding our insurance, but will cancel that next month now that our new insurance plan is in place. I'm might be over paying here, but I want more peace of mind with the official insurance vs Medishare and I'm willing to pay for it. Medishare is better than nothing though and I would likely opt for that vs Obamacare if I didn't find this other independent insurance plan.
