I am close to retirement but far away from Medicare age. The health care situation alone makes me want to leave this country. It’s such a mess. And I don’t see any movement to improve things. It’s just getting worse every year.
The lack of health coverage has been what has stopped me from starting my own business. I do not want to risk any of my family getting sick and not being able to cover it, but I also don't want to blow through all my savings paying for health insurance waiting until I get a VC to give me money.
If you work for a BigCo, you're generally not allowed to do a "side thing", or at least they claim ownership and reserve the right to sue you over it if you are caught doing it. I know this isn't the case for every state, but it's still the case in NY; it's one of the (many) reasons I left Apple actually.
I don't think my current gig is so bad about that, but ironically I feel less of a compulsion to leave my current gig and start my own thing because I actually like this job.
Yeah, I should write to a politician, might be an easy win for them to do that in NYC, modeled after California's laws.
For reasons that I've never fully understood, I have had a strong distaste towards California my entire life, else I would have moved there by now. Probably my inner hipster my necessity to feel like I'm doing things different.
I’ve basically opted out. I can’t see that the healthcare system has any incentives to keep me healthy. In fact all the incentives are to keep me medicated indefinitely. No thanks. I have a plan for catastrophic coverage but I stay as far away from hospitals and doctors as I can otherwise.
What's your maximum out-of-pocket for the catastrophic plan?
Btw-- make sure to double the MOOP since catastrophes can easily straddle the end of one 12-month period and the beginning of the next 12-month period.
"Maximum out of pocket" is a single dollar amount listed somewhere in your health insurance plan. It'd be in the ballpark of $8 or $9k. (Again, double it.)
If you are saying you only have $5k saved then your plan effectively reduces potential bankruptcy-level of healthcare debt down to a manageable level of healthcare debt.
If you have a high-deductible healthcare plan (HDHP) through an employer, look into setting up regular contributions from your paycheck into a health savings account (HSA). You can use an HSA to build a healthcare emergency fund (and later invest those saving like you would in a regular retirement account, which is what it turns into when you hit retirement age).
As it would happen, we're currently in open enrollment so I looked at what is coming for next year. OOP medical max is $4,000 for employee or $8,000 for family for the HDHP plan. So in the ballpark of what I guessed.
It's an amount that would be somewhat disruptive but would not be bankrupting. That's exactly what you want insurance for. People misunderstand insurance when it comes to health care, they think they should never have to pay out of pocket for anything, but that isn't how insurance works for anything else. Insurance is protection from catastrophe, not something that makes routine, predictable expenses go away.
And yes I have an HSA, it is required for HDHP plans. And I make close to the max contribution every year. I've been at that long enough that I have several multiples of my max OOP saved.
But you'll get to learn about part D medication plans and Medigap part F*, G, N, and the other 7 gotcha plans that are run mostly by for-profit megacorps that get to change their prices every year. Oh and Medicare Advantage (part C, not to be confused with Medigap parts) is a total scam with lifetime limits that has already fooled 54% of recipients. Traditional Medicare is way too complicated and should be thrown away and replaced with a universal single-payer system without any for-profit corporate bullshit. Also not covered: dental, vision, hearing aids, long-term care, skilled nursing... you and your family need to be be completely broke to receive Medicaid for long-term care.
* So sorry, you can't have this one anymore because part B deductibles are no longer covered due to the neoliberal MACRA 2015 that doesn't care about costs borne by the poorest Medicare recipients.
It’s not better elsewhere. Healthcare is fundamentally expensive. You can choose between cost, availability of specialists or new treatments, and speed of being seen. The bureaucracy and vague denials under some government healthcare programs make United, Aetna, etc look good.
It's at least better in not making the system a confusing mess of coverage tiers, copays, deductibles, in-network staff in out-network facilities, and all the other jargon used to complicate it to the point where many people don't know if they are covered or not.
Nowhere is absolutely perfect but it's much easier to navigate, and many developed countries have very good care for emergencies and/or life-threatening ailments. It might suck to investigate something chronic but non-life threatening, it won't stress you if you think you are having a stroke and need to call an ambulance.
That’s what frustrates me a lot. The system is not only super expensive but also incredibly complex an unpredictable with tons of very costly traps. Basically it combines the worst aspects of the different approaches.
Pardon the internet lingo, but this is cope. Americans pay way more for their healthcare than citizens of countries with universal healthcare, like France, and their life expectancy is still lower. So clearly, it is better elsewhere. Don't fall into helplessness, the situation can be improved, it will "just" require actual political will to do so, that you unfortunately can't find anywhere among the Right or "moderate" democrats.
