Adventures in health care insurance
In what passes for excitement around me, there are two developments: 1) I've manged to halve my rent. I'll add that when you negotiate for anything, politely ask for as many concessions as possible - it's amazing what you can get with a little shopping around. (eg)
2) In the spirit of taking my own medicine, so to speak, I've signed up for a health savings account based health insurance policy. Basically, it's a 401k that you and your employer fund to pay for any health costs. What you don't spend, rolls over to the next year. You can spend this money to cover all costs of health care, so there are no copays or percentages. If you exceed that amount, it's out of your pocket until a rather high deducatble is met. Admitadly, it's a scary thought, and my office mates selected a traditional health insurance plan because of that fact. However, I'm feeling young and dumb, which is at least half true. Once that deductable is spent, a traditional catastrophic insurance plan kicks in, with a maximum out-of-pocket limit on your contribution, ie, you won't have to ever pay more than $x per year ($x depends on your household). Besides that, basic physical preventive health care and dental care is free (eg, checkups and tooth cleanings).
The nicest benefit for me, though, is that because of my employers contribution, the HSA contribution is larger than my pretax premium. If I don't spend it, my net salary is effectively increased, while I'm still getting insurance. It's the difference between renting and developing equity. Since the HSA is mine, I can keep it if and when I leave. At any time, I can pull the money out for qualified health spending tax free of penalty (the IRS decides what qualifies), or like a 401k, I can take the money out for any purpose now if I pay a 10% penaly + tax. Or I can leave it until I'm 65, and then take it out without penalty (still with taxes). This is in addition to my normal IRA, except that the investment risk and returns are obviously lower (presumably T-bills).
This is obviously going to motivate a cheap bastard like me to never go to the doctor, which is what I've been doing for the last 15 years anyway. To be honest, I'm not sure I would do this if I had a family. It's also something that you need to start when you're young.
So, 24 hours after taking the serum, no effects have been observed.
2) In the spirit of taking my own medicine, so to speak, I've signed up for a health savings account based health insurance policy. Basically, it's a 401k that you and your employer fund to pay for any health costs. What you don't spend, rolls over to the next year. You can spend this money to cover all costs of health care, so there are no copays or percentages. If you exceed that amount, it's out of your pocket until a rather high deducatble is met. Admitadly, it's a scary thought, and my office mates selected a traditional health insurance plan because of that fact. However, I'm feeling young and dumb, which is at least half true. Once that deductable is spent, a traditional catastrophic insurance plan kicks in, with a maximum out-of-pocket limit on your contribution, ie, you won't have to ever pay more than $x per year ($x depends on your household). Besides that, basic physical preventive health care and dental care is free (eg, checkups and tooth cleanings).
The nicest benefit for me, though, is that because of my employers contribution, the HSA contribution is larger than my pretax premium. If I don't spend it, my net salary is effectively increased, while I'm still getting insurance. It's the difference between renting and developing equity. Since the HSA is mine, I can keep it if and when I leave. At any time, I can pull the money out for qualified health spending tax free of penalty (the IRS decides what qualifies), or like a 401k, I can take the money out for any purpose now if I pay a 10% penaly + tax. Or I can leave it until I'm 65, and then take it out without penalty (still with taxes). This is in addition to my normal IRA, except that the investment risk and returns are obviously lower (presumably T-bills).
This is obviously going to motivate a cheap bastard like me to never go to the doctor, which is what I've been doing for the last 15 years anyway. To be honest, I'm not sure I would do this if I had a family. It's also something that you need to start when you're young.
So, 24 hours after taking the serum, no effects have been observed.
posted by Mike Beversluis at
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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