What remains of the private option
As we had been warned, the insurance carrier for 42nd and Treadmill’s CFI Care (not its real initials) will be changing on the first of January, and we sat through the usual enrollment meeting yesterday.
I am pleased to report, however, that a trace of transparency is creeping into the proceedings: alongside the usual handouts was a list detailing the actual price as charged last year, the price that would have to be paid for renewal (which was a third higher), and the price quoted us for the new package. I hadn’t had access to these figures, but my ballpark estimates were well within the foul lines. And to my knowledge, they’d never divulged this sort of thing before.
Full family coverage, if you’re curious, would have gone up to $14,172 a year. There are two options for the new year: same coverages, one has a larger network. The more expensive of the two will run $12,141. (There are add-on packages for vision and dental, which didn’t go up very much by comparison.) As a single person, I get charged $3761; the dental runs an additional $273. (Had they renewed with the previous carrier, I’d be looking at just over $6000.) Last year’s claims, mostly for drugs plus one CT scan, were in the $1800 range.
I say “I get charged” because that’s the actual cost of the policy. I pay nothing toward it in the way of premia, having served X number of years; 42nd and Treadmill picks up the tab. The coverages will be changing only slightly with the new carrier: office visits will be standardized at $30 instead of a lower tier for the family M.D. (or D.O., in my case) and a higher one for specialists. Prescriptions, I suspect, will be just about a wash, assuming I can somehow sidestep the stultified “step therapy” business on my antihypertensives.
Mark Alger »
17 December 2009 · 11:20 pm
Solemmegetthisstraight.
They’re charging you $14k per annum to cover $1,800 in actual expenditures?
Do they supply Vaseline?
And people wonder why medicine costs so… I don’t suppose the employer would hand you the cash instead? Might be cheaper for you to buy a major medical policy and pay cash out of pocket for more quotidian needs.
M
CGHill »
18 December 2009 · 7:09 am
I’ve suggested that on occasion. (And I don’t have an actual full-fledged family policy; the one I have covers me alone, at the new price of $4004.)
Last year’s expenditures were on the low side, but four years out of six, I pay in more than I take out. This is, of course, the nature of insurance; on the automotive side of things, I’ve had one claim since 1990.
And really, the automotive version of insurance makes rather a lot more sense: there’s no reimbursement for oil changes or tire rotation, but they’re there if you roll over on a country road. Selling something like that as health insurance is going to be troublesome, when you have people who have been conditioned to expect that drugs should never cost over $50 or so and that a visit to the doctor should be a lot less than a visit to the salon.