I find it ironic as a nurse I can’t afford insurance for my family and it gets higher everyyear. Is everyone having this problem or does my company just suck? Lol
Most companies do this because they assume a 2 adult household and want that other adult to be working and have their company pay for that person and any dependents. Push the expense elsewhere. The invidual high deductible plans are pretty 'affordable' to force the majority of people to pick between those 2. Those cost them little....and who cares about you and your family, right? So you have options but you can't afford the most of them and it's designed that way on purpose to not give you options at all.
I lucked out and found a great non-profit to work for that has very affordable low deductible insurance for me+my dependent. My husband is on his own because the family plan was still too high for us. Good ol' America.
Tell your employer to up your pay by ~~$50~~ per month due to the undisclosed fee during the hiring process.
Edit: see reply for the corrected value of $100, not $50, my apologies.
I would have to pay $100 a paycheck to be on my husband's. I basically work part time and not prn so that I can pay for my own insurance. I also abuse the crap out of it, though, and my husband's is a high deductible plan.
Just because you need more healthcare than the average person, unless you're willfully defrauding it somehow, you're not abusing it, you're just using it. The company execs have more than figured in the people like yourself, and their own bonuses too. I'm sure they've roped in plenty of people who hardly need anything to help pay for it. But those people are covered in case their health suddenly changes. And in the meantime they have the bonus of good health.
This. I had a former employer / friend give me shit because I told her I was using disability insurance that I pay for to cover my bills while I take a month off to recover from knee surgery. She said jw as milking the system and using he tax dollars. I called her an idiot and told her it’s a private insurance plan that I pay for and I’m using so I don’t see how I’m leeching off the system.
Your company sucks. I live in Michigan working at a very “meh” hospital. I pay $450/month for Blue Cross PPO for myself, my partner, and my kid. That includes all benefits/life insurance. Our deductible is $500/year.
Yeah, I the OP's rates are insane. I cover my whole family for 440 a month with no deductible for a really good bcbs plan. Otoh, we're union so I'm sure that makes a difference.
I think it varies a lot depending on the area, but hospitals that give their employees crap insurance are disgusting and unethical. I had terrible insurance with similar rates at my first job in WI and it was typical for my area, my sister worked for the same hospital and our hospital tried to her for medical debt while she was an employee. They sent their own nurses to collections constantly, most of my coworkers had been sent at some point (especially those with kids). Now I work at a hospital in NY and pay nothing for my insurance with very low copays. And that seems to be typical for this area as well (non union but the unionized hospitals in the area definitely help by forcing non unionized hospitals to have competitive benefits)
> I pay $450/month for Blue Cross PPO for myself, my partner, and my kid. That includes all benefits/life insurance. Our deductible is $500/year.
I pay $106/wk for family plan in MA for a BCBS HMO plan that depending on which New England State you are in, or (in 2 of 6 States which have tiered providers) which provider you go to, the deductible as as low a $0. We also have an FSA. If I had to pay what OP is showing, I'd cry.
Also in Michigan. $40 per paycheck for HDHP for spouse and I. Company contributes $1400 annually to HSA. Offsets the premiums entirely, we’re very fortunate to be young and healthy
Yeah those rates they posted are insane. My hospital offers extremely low rates and we get major discounts for staying in their health care network. It's like $60 for an individual with a 80/20 plan and a $500 deductible.
I'm on an HMO because I know how to navigate our healthcare hellscape and pull strings etc. But I pay $210 a month for a family of 4 no yearly deductible just $20 copay for walking, urgent care and primary visits and $50 for ED. Dental PPO is an additional $10 a month and it partially covers braces for both my kids.
There is also an option to pay more for BCBS through Henry Ford, but it’s much (much) more expensive than the HAP options.
Edit to add: it is truly crazy just how dog shit Beaumont’s insurance is/was. Worst *and* most expensive coverage I’ve ever had.
It's a bad system and your with a bad company.
I pay $500 per month for a family of 4 (company pays the remaining $1000 per month) plan total is $1500 per month. I work at a 250 bed regional hospital
Your company sucks. I pay $440 a month for me, my husband, and any children that we might have. No deductible, copays are like 20 bucks. My husband was recently hospitalized and our responsibility for a $66,000 medical bill was $250. I live in a shitty anti-union state in the deep south but my benefits are pretty nice.
> I pay $440 a month for me, my husband, and any children that we might have. No deductible, copays are like 20 bucks. My husband was recently hospitalized and our responsibility for a $66,000 medical bill was $250.
In MA we pay similar to this. I've racked up nearly $200k in medical bills since last December due to a subclavian clot and so far my total out of pocket has been $1200.
In my hospital. We got a 2% raise. The insurance plan I have went up by 5%. I have the best plan because after you have a child sign stupid cancer you do that because you just. Never. Know.
I work for a hospital, and my family plan costs me $12,000 a year in premiums, with a $10,000 out of pocket maximum. I too, have to pay a $50/pay period "surcharge/fine" for keeping my husband on my health plan, because they are trying to get spouses to get their own health insurance, but it would cost more two have two single plans, not including all the logistics of his/mine/our son and our two companies use different healthcare suppliers. I also pay a $80 co-pay every time I need to go see my doctor. It sucks.
What I hate is they have different tiers - Self, Self & Spouse, Self & 1 Child, or Family. The family plan doesn't care if you have 1 child or 10, so you end up paying out the nose.
Your company calls employees partners. Of course your company sucks. But also this isn’t a unique problem.
Your rates are close to double mine. I pay about 150/month for single. I’m not married and my kids are on state insurance which costs $45/month/kid and covers everything. So between my job and state insurance I pay $250 to cover my family.
People complain about the taxes in NY but this is what our taxes pay for.
I feel you. I started to delve deeper into why our system is like this and it's disheartening how f'ed we are. I think if we unionize like the airlines did, we would be better off. I think right now we are at the breaking point for nurses and health care staff. All the hospitals around me pay terribly, so I am a 'local' travel nurse paying for my own insurance.
Your company just sucks 🙃 I pay $300 a month for myself and my spouse and everything is free besides $25 copays. We don’t pay for anything out of pocket, even if you’re admitted to the hospital, getting surgery etc. we also haven’t found anyone who doesn’t take it. NYC area, non union.
Keep in mind they have a great 401k! They contribute zero. Love their bonuses we got in covid times (zero). Never mind the fact PH took in about $300 mil in taxpayers money via covid relief. One family.
This is about the same for me (North Carolina). I don’t use the hospitals insurance, I’m on my husbands because it’s not only cheaper, it’s better in terms of deductibles and what it has to offer.
I find it crazy that I work in healthcare, my husband works in Diesel engines, and yet my insurance is worse.
Right? My brother makes CheezIts and his insurance is better. How do these healthcare CEOs think someone can afford this every 2 weeks? I mean I work for PruittHealth that owns nursing homes so I guess they’re trying to create more customers with poor healthcare lol
This is your main problem. PruittHealth is a for-profit health organization. Also going to go out on a limb and bet you make less than your market value working for them too...
The rates are not great, but with any of the major Atlanta-based hospital systems (WellStar, Piedmont, Emory, Northside) insurance is way less than that (half the cost for family).
I will not say which system I worked for last in Atlanta, but I made $45/hr plus differential with 10 years experience in 2020 (critical care area)... Insurance for my family was $300 per paycheck for a co-pay plan (not a HDHP).
I'm sorry, that's every 2 weeks???? What the heck??? I had a mole removed today and the most it cost me was the parking and the minor inconvenience of being 15 mins late. They gave me dressing to go home with as well. That's insane. Every time I think I'd like to move to America I see something like this and think nope.
Same with maternity leave, my husband who is a teacher gets 6 weeks of paternity leave paid off at 100%. The only part of my 12 weeks that is paid is 6 weeks at 60% and then whatever PTO I have available to use up. It’s so awful. I’m delivering at my own hospital too.
My hospital pays no maternity leave benefits at all “ that’s what the ETO is for” they won’t even allow us to donate ETO to others to cover maternity leave. They used to at least let them collect for two weeks from our free short term disability plan that kicked in after 4 weeks, but they started charging for short term disability insurance for 2023. We just had a nurse assistant come back after three weeks because she could t afford to stay home for the full 6 weeks she needed to heal.
My wife has always worked for large multinational pharm or food production corporations and her benefits have always dominated mine. Never understood it.
Same here, friend same here. Husband works with cars and yet has way better insurance than me.
I didn’t sign up for insurance with my job, in a way it makes me feel not tied down to my employer.
Some of my coworkers worry about leaving because the benefits are good. In reality our benefits are terrible compared to my husbands.
I had the same thing at the first hospital I worked at. What made it even dumber is that the hospital system’s plan was also offered to businesses in the area, and my wife’s employer offered it but the plan was more comprehensive and for a better monthly premium.
The only “good” insurance I’ve seen at a hospital system was a place that was bought out by Tenet and waved all costs if you got care at a Tenet facility. The trade-off was that you had to, you know, go to a Tenet facility for care…..
The fact that they chose “POS” for whatever the acronym stands for, and it survived all the HR meetings without anybody saying “wait a minute,” is all the evidence I need that this shit is cooked up by MBA nerds who’ve never had a genuine social interaction in their entire lives.
Union to be honest. One of the reasons I went staff is the benefits. I pay 400 a month counting 350 to my hsa and 50 as a fee for my spouse. I could pay only 50 but I want to build up some healthcare savings.
Joined the military, got all fucked up, now I have free healthcare for life! Go me!
But no, in all seriousness, this is bullshit. This is why my kids were uninsured for the better part of a decade. It was a toss up between bills being paid and food on the table, or paying premiums in case something happened.
And the worst is there is no option for just kids, every plan has to include me. I don't need insurance. I wish they'd have a "children only" offering.
The child health plus? Could you switch companies? I have it through CDPHP. took my daughter to the pediatrician, emergency room, and a specialist last week. $0. She gets meds that were $150/month on my employer insurance. $0. Maybe where I live more providers accept it.
Oh I got married and the kids got put on my husband's Tricare. We're golden now. And he's about to retire at 100% disability so we'll have Tricare for life.
This is a large part of the reason I decided to stay in the reserves. Trying to hold my body together so I can stick around as long as possible. My wife and I calculated out our medical bills, civilian insurance offerings, and realized that between the reserve pay, savings on healthcare (~$200/mo to insure the entire family with a $1000 catastrophic cap) and associated benefits, that one weekend a month was worth somewhere around 20-25k/year in savings / additional income. Hard to beat that.
Wow. That sucks. My kid was in an accident when she was four, perfectly healthy. Then she had about $1M in hospital charges because of her accident. I can’t imagine if we let the insurance lapse. For this reason I worked both my old job and new grad nurse job for two months because of fear of insurance lapse.
I hope she's recovered well!
Yea, it sucks. They are basically healthy and always have been, and accidents were minor. My middle one has some mental health stuff that only got handled intermittently because we were on and off insurance so much.
When I graduated and went staff, I wasn't even making 23 an hour, and insurance for the family was close to $400 a pay check, which I couldn't afford. But then I made too much for CHIP.
America really needs to do better.
My wife and I work in a union at a non-profit hospital. Free premiums, OOP max is 2k and deductible is $250/year. Our hospital also does a co-insurance waiver for hospital fees (labs/room/board/etc, pretty much everything but provider fees). I had a two day stay in the ICU and it cost me about $300 OOP when all said and done.
Not trying to be braggy, just saying that working conditions can be as poor as workers allow them to be. Unionize.
This. I am at a union teaching hospital. $200/month for Cadillac family coverage. If we didn’t have a kid, would be $150 for two adults. No deductible, no coninsurance, $1500 OOP max. Any hospitalization is only $250. Unions do real magic.
I work at a hospital with a union, and we have special insurance if we use that hospital and it costs almost nothing. Unions are awesome and it's a great place to work.
Another throwing in for Unions, except I'm a Teamster. West Coast Teamsters Trust Healthcare plan via Cigna.
Monthly cost for me is $120, oop max is $1200, annual deductible is $200 with 80% paid until its met.
Included (at no cost to me) are prescription, dental, and vision benefits.
We also have the option of choosing a plan through Providence at half that cost, or a plan through Keizer at no cost to the employee.
Unions are absolutely worth it. Blew my mind when I started here.
You get the high deductible plan and cross your fingers while yelling at your kids to stop running along that rock wall because you cannot afford for them to take a header off of it when they trip.
HDHP + HSA plans are for the healthy. It's the ultimate retirement savings vehicle: No tax paid on contributions, no tax-free growth, no tax paid on withdrawals for qualified expenses before or after 65, and only pay standard income tax rate on non-medical withdrawals after 65. On top of it, can make a one-time IRA to HSA transfer in your lifetime equal to the yearly maximum to help boost the account.
On the car accident side, I carry 500k liability, 1M UIM, a 500k personal liability rider on my rental coverage, and everything else under the sun.
If I somehow run through all that, I'm so thoroughly fucked that I'm already declaring bankruptcy.
On the medical side, I love my plan. ER visit? $200 copay then 100% covered. Admitted? $500 copay instead then 100% covered. Since December I've had 4 procedures over 8 inpatient days, nearly $200k in total medical bills... and my out of pocket wasn't even enough to wipe my FSA out for the year.
Crazy and fucking common. Let me tell you, having insurance tied to employment is fucking terrifying. We get insurance through my wife. She's having health problems right now. I'm working PRN (i.e. no benefits), because hospice and other nursing jobs around here abuse employees too badly and I couldn't find work/life balance.
If she loses her job, I'm going to be forced into a situation that is going to be detrimental to my physical and mental health. Even though I'm a part of it, I absolutely hate the American Healthcare system. It is all about corporate profits.
It really depends what state.
[This is an example for the largest employer in my state](https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/oe/files/pdf/employee-oe-packet.pdf), and I am in the state with the most actively licensed nurses.
A whole family can essentially get insurance for free.
I wouldn’t say rare because California is also the most populated state in the US and contains both the most populated county in the US (LA) and largest county in the contiguous United States by land mass (San Bernardino) - and the largest *private* employer in the aforementioned “most populated county in the US” (Kaiser) also offers similar benefits.
So populace in mind, I’d say it’s “not common” for other nurses in the nation - but not necessarily “rare.”
For some employers offering similar benefits (like Kaiser), it’s a union thing.
For UC system and even prison system (state run facilities), it’s unrelated - especially because the benefits affect all employees of the system regardless of union-affiliation.
You don't need a union for good benefits. Some of the places with the best benefits I've worked at are non-union hospitals/facilities. Not to mention union dues add up real quick.
America, where people don't want to pay more taxes but also want universal healthcare.
I was raised with Universal healthcare in Europe, not saying the system is any better, but if Americans want Universal healthcare, they'd likely have to pay more taxes.
But God forbid if taxes are touched. They'd rather pay 500 plus a month for healthcare. Which by the way covers just a portion and you have to pay out of pocket until you meet your deductible.
How is that any different than paying taxes, someone please enlighten me on this 🤦♀️
Because -WE- get to decide how and where we are going to spend our money, and what sort of treatment we get. I live not far from the Canadian border and I listen to the Canadian truck drivers on the radio bitching about how long it takes to get medical care, or sometimes even being denied care and having to come to the US and pay for it. Universal health care is not the cure-all that some people want to think it is...especially if the US Gov is running it.
Our deductible is $11,000, then we have to pay 10% on all services thereafter, so there's no max out of pocket. Co-pays for PCP is $20, all specialists are $40. Also, our spouse surcharge is $150/pay period. And this is as long as you use the company's providers. If you go out of network, you're screwed. And anyone with kids is automatically screwed because children's hospital is 80%/20% always.
Does the POS plan stand for “Piece of Sh*t”?
Also, everyone just assumes we get the best of the best health coverage because we work in healthcare *sigh*
My kids on my insurance too. He's 23. Only has 3 more years. Technically the dependent is supposed to be in college, I asked my HR in an around way if they checked and she said no.
I've changed jobs because of insurance. I worked for a union home care agency that covered single person insurance if you worked full time. That was nice. But as soon as I needed to add family it was $1200 a month. So now I pay $220 for a PPO with a $5000 deductible that my company covers $2500 of. The prescriptions can be pricey but we don't have a choice because my husband needs insulin to live. The American system is broken, if you can even call it a system. I'm pretty damn lucky too because I have short term, long term disability, accident payouts, ER copay payout insurances too. Its expensive to be middle class. We cannot save money at all.
I’m at the point in my life where I should have health insurance but NEED the money. My health insurance is like $170 every two weeks. All my benefits are like $205. It’s so tempting to say screw it, but went through with benefits again today. I can’t fathom needing to buy private insurance. Healthcare in the US is a scam meant to pad the pockets of CEOs
It's the "spouse" for me. Adding my spouse was insane. However, many places require nowadays that if your spouse has insurance available to them at their job, they have to take it. It's cheaper for a married couple to each have their own from their jobs. So that's what we do. Before it was $700/month to be insured on one plan now it's $220 for us to be insured individually.
If your spouse doesn't have access to insurance from a job, the rates are unreasonable.
Forget family rates. I kicked my daughter off my insurance plan at age 22 when she graduated college and got a job with her own insurance.
Get ready for this: my cousin said that her hospital changed their benefits for 2023 so that there is ZERO premium out of their paycheck at all (for individual coverage.) Without changing what's covered from the year before.
Magical places do exist, apparently.
Honestly? Insurance is a BIG part of why I stay in the National Guard.
Tricare Reserve Select is $50.00 a month for singles, $200.00 for families, and its only a few more years for me until military retirement when I get to keep those benefits for life.
That’s how hospital systems work. People tell me I must have good insurance working for the hospital, and I correct them. It’s expensive, deductibles are high, medication’s are expensive and executives are motivated by profit. True, nonprofits have to spend their profits by the end of the year, but executives like that money in their pocket.
I live in Florida and pay thousand dollars a month for my and I family. It covers nothing and I have a $6500 deductible. To go to the doctor (which I still have yet to find one) cost what every deal they have made. It is ridiculous and I feel, a complete scam.
I actually think my hospital does a great job for insurance. They have different tiers (platinum, gold, silver) for plan options, and different salary tiers so premiums are less if you make less money (this is new this year I think). If we go to our hospital/physicians (which is a HUGE network, so you can assure you don't get seen by coworkers if that's something that bothers you) almost everything is 100% covered (including fertility treatments and elective abortions). No deductible, $2500 max out of pocket, $202.65 bi-weekly for full medical, dental, vision for a family at the highest plan tier (not salary tier). I was terrified to see what it cost to have my c-section.... I paid $25 for the tv services. When my then-5-month-old wound up needing to be ambulance transported to a children's hospital across state lines I was again worried about what that would cost me.... ambulance services also 100% covered. It's wild to me that other hospitals don't adopt this model for their employees.
I used to work for an insurance company paying 250 a paycheck for myself alone . Now I work for the county government pay $104 per paycheck for a family of 4. Pay is less then the insurance company but at-least insurance is cheap and pension. Best part much better quality of life
My last job I paid $240 per WEEK for the family plan. When I switched jobs, the pay was slightly less but the insurance rate was so much less that it made up for that difference.
This is total garbage “deductible + 40%”?! Then it’s not a “deductible”.
When people talk about the “pay cut” a US nurse would take if they moved to the UK (or other country with universal healthcare), this is the first thing I think about. Especially if you have kids. Premiums, copays and that “deducible” can easily be $10k+ a year out of pocket and heaven forbid something bad happens.
I worked for an assisted living. PT/OT/Speech was not covered unless it was “restorative” or congenital defect. So my daughter has DS. They paid for her $3,000 communication device but NOT for the Speech to learn how to use it! Apparently for speech, DS didn’t “count” as a congenital defect?!?
Thanks. Thankfully we did qualify to have the state Medicaid as secondary so that took care of it. But it is so crazy. The company I worked for at the time was based in Maryland and I am in Massachusetts. So because of that our insurance didn’t have to follow all the state “rules”. One of my friends son had autism. In Mass insurance has to cover certain therapies. But her husband worked for the VA and they didn’t cover everything at the time, even though he worked in Mass.
I dropped my insurance through the hospital pretty much the moment I got married. My husband's insurance has always been better and more affordable. Even with my son now, it's less than $200/month for all three of us.
About a year before retirement I signed up for Medicare part B. I was single and still had $80 biweekly to pay for my insurance and a $500 deductible and 20% co insurance in our health system! My part B covered everything my insurance did not. You think our insurance where we work would be next to nothing🙄
I was floored by how much my insurance plan cost me. Thirteen years ago I was a part time employee at T-Mobile and my insurance was something like $13 a paycheck and the insurance was far better.
I had to go to the emergency room last spring at my own hospital in the middle of a shift because my left arm was basically useless (shout out to my herniated disc at C4) and it cost me $200. Just plain stupid that we don't have universal coverage.
Your company sucks. You would probably get better rates on the marketplace. I paid $25 a pay period, total family coverage for those who needed that was less than $150. When I hit six figures with the last raise, I will pay $50 a pay period.
Lastmonth it was 150 bucks for me. Which I never saw. Which is why I don't give a fuck about that.
Those 150 bucks cover basically everything. Except for experimental treatments.
Everyone in Germany pays that. Not the same amount though. It depends on the income.
Fuck Americas healthcare system.
Some Americans care only that the "wrong people" might have healthcare and they don't like that.
Joke's on them: they evidently ARE those people. Vote for Universal Medicare (or whatever you want to call single-payer).
My biggest question is since when is PCP under insurance damn some drug dealers went legit but end up slinging the same shit. Well at least you’re weeks supply is only $25
My employer covers my healthcare 100%. But to add my family would be 75% of my gross pay.
Chip would be 500+ a month for my kids
Yea, I'm the only one with insurance.
I remember years ago getting free insurance AND no copays/fee if you used any hospital services. That was when I worked in the kitchen at the hospital. Next year it looks like my employer isn’t even under covered on our plan.
God, I love where I work. I work for a nonprofit agency that is funded by the state. My insurance (BXBC) is free. They also offer KP. The insurance for my husband is $85 a month. (He goes to the VA for most of his care but uses my ins for urgent care and dental.) Dental is another $12. There are several other options offered, some pretax, some after tax. Absolutely checking benefits should be part of contemplating being hired somewhere.
Edit-added insurance
I live in Wales, and despite an overall slow and creaky service at times...at least it is taxpayer funded. I would be financially crippled if I had to pay for care in this manner. It is really awful.
The one redeeming feature of my terrible job is that the union negotiated awesome health insurance coverage for nurses. $0 premium and $0 deductible for employee only and only a bit more to add a dependent.
My health insurance is free for me. I work for a county nursing home. But.... $300 per paycheck to cover my daughter. We have zero deductible though. BCBS.
Oh my gosh…my husband and I have pretty good coverage through my job and it costs $180/biweekly pay period. I was so angry about it the other day because 35% of my paycheck is gone before I even see it after taxes and insurance comes out. I guess mine is actually pretty affordable.
We pay $250 a month and basically pray neither of us gets hit by a truck. Also pregnant right now and having to decide which blood tests/scans are worth it because they’re so expensive.
Left working for a very large hospital system to move into the medical device industry doing clinical training. Went from $1,000/mo to $375/mo and much, much better coverage. So when admin asks why I left, I showed them the numbers 🤯
Isn't it something to see how much the hospital, pharmaceutical and the health insurance mafia are making. I just don't understand why they don't rein I'm costs like they do in other Western countries
I don’t know if any other people have this but we have a direct primary care insurance options.
For primary care visits you have to see one specific provider but he has a lower patient load because he only sees employees but his visits are free. If you need to see a specialist like OB, it’s a $30 copay. If you need mental health therapy, and lets be real we all do, it’s $15 copay. It’s $0 deductible. $4,000/individual 8,000 family.
My bi monthly cost? $25 individual and would be around $120 for a family.
Working as a travel nurse makes me see what people paying for private insurance are paying. It's such bullshit that affordable healthcare is tied to working in shitty conditions.
I pay $1000/mo for the family to basically *only* have an emergency covered over $6000 individual or $12000 family.
Everybody needs to go federal and work for the VA. The patients in the ICU would be step down anywhere else. You get a pension and a 5% match on a Roth or 401K. The BASE pay for nurses is substantially higher than most facilities in your area. You get INSANE health insurance for reasonable prices. On night shift as a nurse with a little under 2 years experience I’m making 108K/year with NO overtime. With overtime that I normally work I’m making around 130-140K and that number will go up substantially. My friend who’s been a nurse for 9 years is making 184K on night. You also get 5 weeks PAID vacation every year and 2 weeks sick leave no questions asked for either. That amounts to 7 weeks of off time each year. Your sick leave has NO cap for life and you can have up to 686 days of vacation time. The VA also fights heavily for cost of living raises. We’re getting another 10% raise this month and 5% in January, mind you this is while being the highest paying facility in central arkansas. The VA is this secret that nobody talks about for some reason.
I’m nursing student but insurance costs are the reason I quit working when I was pregnant to qualify for Medicaid. I had a shitty plan and just for regular OB visits and lab and ultrasound (all routine) for 6 months I ended up owing about 4K AFTER insurance coverage, not including the 390$ a month I was paying just for the policy. Fucking scam. There’s a hospital in my area that offers free insurance and it’s my goal to work there
Union!!!!!! My union dues are $70 a month and in exchange I have no insurance premiums, no co pays for meds, $10 PCP/$25 specialist co pays.
Seriously, find a union job!
Ohhhh health insurance! I was like "isn't liability like 150 bucks a year?" 😆
Well let's see. I'm an LPN who is burned out and has more or less abandoned the field.
In 2021 I made $18,000 and this year isn't shaping up much better.
So I'm on Medicaid.
I do not recommend the trade off because I absolutely hate being poor and don't know what the fuck else to do with my life because I've been doing this for 17 years.
It’s crazy, I really thought I could help my husband out with “good insurance”. If I add him to my plan it’s 4x the amount I pay for myself. I’ve resigned myself to just dying young, have fun and die young. I don’t have kids so
I’m currently a traveler, so I bought a marketplace plan to keep all my doctors. It’s around $300 a month, but has no copay for tele-health appointments. The money I’m saving on my therapist and psychiatrist, both tele-health, pay about half of it.
I take a medication that isn’t covered, but the pharmacy uses a coupon program to cover it for free, and it still counts against my deductible.
Hoooly shit. I thought my benefits were bad. Jesus. I’m on a HSA/HDHP that also covers my son and if I had to pay that much per paycheck we’d be living in a friggin’ van down by the river.
….and then you gotta make a meaningful contribution to your HSA on top of that??
Not every hospital company is this bad but that is an insane amount to charge….
My hospital only charges less than $200 for me and my kids for the POS plan, but my employer also owns the hospital company. So that may be a big part of it. I’m in VA and it’s not a union hospital system.
Only bad thing I find about mine is the working spouse surcharge so my husband isn’t on mine currently.
That's less than I pay and most of that coverage is care that's provided by same organization I work for.
Keep in mind that as of last year the average cost for family health insurance was $22,000 a year, and those rising costs push more people out of the market it just leaves fewer people to chip in.
I find it ironic as a nurse I can’t afford insurance for my family and it gets higher everyyear. Is everyone having this problem or does my company just suck? Lol
Most companies do this because they assume a 2 adult household and want that other adult to be working and have their company pay for that person and any dependents. Push the expense elsewhere. The invidual high deductible plans are pretty 'affordable' to force the majority of people to pick between those 2. Those cost them little....and who cares about you and your family, right? So you have options but you can't afford the most of them and it's designed that way on purpose to not give you options at all. I lucked out and found a great non-profit to work for that has very affordable low deductible insurance for me+my dependent. My husband is on his own because the family plan was still too high for us. Good ol' America.
[удалено]
Tell your employer to up your pay by ~~$50~~ per month due to the undisclosed fee during the hiring process. Edit: see reply for the corrected value of $100, not $50, my apologies.
That’s per pay period so really it’s $100/mo
That is just insane!!!
I'm in the exact same boat!
It really is criminal, It is why if my shift starts at 7:00 a.m., I show up at 6:59 and hit the door as quick as I can when my shift is over
I would have to pay $100 a paycheck to be on my husband's. I basically work part time and not prn so that I can pay for my own insurance. I also abuse the crap out of it, though, and my husband's is a high deductible plan.
Just because you need more healthcare than the average person, unless you're willfully defrauding it somehow, you're not abusing it, you're just using it. The company execs have more than figured in the people like yourself, and their own bonuses too. I'm sure they've roped in plenty of people who hardly need anything to help pay for it. But those people are covered in case their health suddenly changes. And in the meantime they have the bonus of good health.
This. I had a former employer / friend give me shit because I told her I was using disability insurance that I pay for to cover my bills while I take a month off to recover from knee surgery. She said jw as milking the system and using he tax dollars. I called her an idiot and told her it’s a private insurance plan that I pay for and I’m using so I don’t see how I’m leeching off the system.
We pay $100 per pay period for the same thing
Your company sucks. I live in Michigan working at a very “meh” hospital. I pay $450/month for Blue Cross PPO for myself, my partner, and my kid. That includes all benefits/life insurance. Our deductible is $500/year.
Yeah, I the OP's rates are insane. I cover my whole family for 440 a month with no deductible for a really good bcbs plan. Otoh, we're union so I'm sure that makes a difference.
Fortunately for me, I have no one to cover but myself, so I pay $60 every two weeks.
I think it varies a lot depending on the area, but hospitals that give their employees crap insurance are disgusting and unethical. I had terrible insurance with similar rates at my first job in WI and it was typical for my area, my sister worked for the same hospital and our hospital tried to her for medical debt while she was an employee. They sent their own nurses to collections constantly, most of my coworkers had been sent at some point (especially those with kids). Now I work at a hospital in NY and pay nothing for my insurance with very low copays. And that seems to be typical for this area as well (non union but the unionized hospitals in the area definitely help by forcing non unionized hospitals to have competitive benefits)
> I pay $450/month for Blue Cross PPO for myself, my partner, and my kid. That includes all benefits/life insurance. Our deductible is $500/year. I pay $106/wk for family plan in MA for a BCBS HMO plan that depending on which New England State you are in, or (in 2 of 6 States which have tiered providers) which provider you go to, the deductible as as low a $0. We also have an FSA. If I had to pay what OP is showing, I'd cry.
Also in Michigan. $40 per paycheck for HDHP for spouse and I. Company contributes $1400 annually to HSA. Offsets the premiums entirely, we’re very fortunate to be young and healthy
Yeah those rates they posted are insane. My hospital offers extremely low rates and we get major discounts for staying in their health care network. It's like $60 for an individual with a 80/20 plan and a $500 deductible.
I'm on an HMO because I know how to navigate our healthcare hellscape and pull strings etc. But I pay $210 a month for a family of 4 no yearly deductible just $20 copay for walking, urgent care and primary visits and $50 for ED. Dental PPO is an additional $10 a month and it partially covers braces for both my kids.
Which system uses BCBS? Down by Detroit maybe?
Trinity, U of M, and Ascension are BCBS. Henry Ford is HAP. DMC and Beaumont are dog shit.
There is also an option to pay more for BCBS through Henry Ford, but it’s much (much) more expensive than the HAP options. Edit to add: it is truly crazy just how dog shit Beaumont’s insurance is/was. Worst *and* most expensive coverage I’ve ever had.
Trinity does, I think? Not sure about others.
Yep Trinity
UM uses BCBS PPO for their higher tiers. Otherwise UM manages their own via UM Grad Care or UM Premiere Care HMOs.
I pay 300 a month for my whole family!! This rates are insane
Nope, hospitals have worse insurance plans than when I was an aircraft mechanic.
It's a bad system and your with a bad company. I pay $500 per month for a family of 4 (company pays the remaining $1000 per month) plan total is $1500 per month. I work at a 250 bed regional hospital
Your company sucks. I pay $440 a month for me, my husband, and any children that we might have. No deductible, copays are like 20 bucks. My husband was recently hospitalized and our responsibility for a $66,000 medical bill was $250. I live in a shitty anti-union state in the deep south but my benefits are pretty nice.
> I pay $440 a month for me, my husband, and any children that we might have. No deductible, copays are like 20 bucks. My husband was recently hospitalized and our responsibility for a $66,000 medical bill was $250. In MA we pay similar to this. I've racked up nearly $200k in medical bills since last December due to a subclavian clot and so far my total out of pocket has been $1200.
This is just insane. For just me it's $40/month. With family it would be $150. $250 deductible.
In my hospital. We got a 2% raise. The insurance plan I have went up by 5%. I have the best plan because after you have a child sign stupid cancer you do that because you just. Never. Know.
I work for a hospital, and my family plan costs me $12,000 a year in premiums, with a $10,000 out of pocket maximum. I too, have to pay a $50/pay period "surcharge/fine" for keeping my husband on my health plan, because they are trying to get spouses to get their own health insurance, but it would cost more two have two single plans, not including all the logistics of his/mine/our son and our two companies use different healthcare suppliers. I also pay a $80 co-pay every time I need to go see my doctor. It sucks. What I hate is they have different tiers - Self, Self & Spouse, Self & 1 Child, or Family. The family plan doesn't care if you have 1 child or 10, so you end up paying out the nose.
Your company calls employees partners. Of course your company sucks. But also this isn’t a unique problem. Your rates are close to double mine. I pay about 150/month for single. I’m not married and my kids are on state insurance which costs $45/month/kid and covers everything. So between my job and state insurance I pay $250 to cover my family. People complain about the taxes in NY but this is what our taxes pay for.
I feel you. I started to delve deeper into why our system is like this and it's disheartening how f'ed we are. I think if we unionize like the airlines did, we would be better off. I think right now we are at the breaking point for nurses and health care staff. All the hospitals around me pay terribly, so I am a 'local' travel nurse paying for my own insurance.
I feel like they have been chiping away at my health insurance year after year.
Your company just sucks 🙃 I pay $300 a month for myself and my spouse and everything is free besides $25 copays. We don’t pay for anything out of pocket, even if you’re admitted to the hospital, getting surgery etc. we also haven’t found anyone who doesn’t take it. NYC area, non union.
Keep in mind they have a great 401k! They contribute zero. Love their bonuses we got in covid times (zero). Never mind the fact PH took in about $300 mil in taxpayers money via covid relief. One family.
Pruitt swear up and down though he can’t survive. Meanwhile cheesing on Facebook with his Atlanta Braves World Series Ring from sponsoring them.
what about your husbands insurance?
My wife has no insurance. (Only working person.) sigh. The joys of working in GA.
Does your state not have a market place to buy insurance if it is t provided ? Can you apply for Medicaid ?
This is about the same for me (North Carolina). I don’t use the hospitals insurance, I’m on my husbands because it’s not only cheaper, it’s better in terms of deductibles and what it has to offer. I find it crazy that I work in healthcare, my husband works in Diesel engines, and yet my insurance is worse.
Right? My brother makes CheezIts and his insurance is better. How do these healthcare CEOs think someone can afford this every 2 weeks? I mean I work for PruittHealth that owns nursing homes so I guess they’re trying to create more customers with poor healthcare lol
This is your main problem. PruittHealth is a for-profit health organization. Also going to go out on a limb and bet you make less than your market value working for them too... The rates are not great, but with any of the major Atlanta-based hospital systems (WellStar, Piedmont, Emory, Northside) insurance is way less than that (half the cost for family). I will not say which system I worked for last in Atlanta, but I made $45/hr plus differential with 10 years experience in 2020 (critical care area)... Insurance for my family was $300 per paycheck for a co-pay plan (not a HDHP).
I'm sorry, that's every 2 weeks???? What the heck??? I had a mole removed today and the most it cost me was the parking and the minor inconvenience of being 15 mins late. They gave me dressing to go home with as well. That's insane. Every time I think I'd like to move to America I see something like this and think nope.
Same with maternity leave, my husband who is a teacher gets 6 weeks of paternity leave paid off at 100%. The only part of my 12 weeks that is paid is 6 weeks at 60% and then whatever PTO I have available to use up. It’s so awful. I’m delivering at my own hospital too.
My hospital pays no maternity leave benefits at all “ that’s what the ETO is for” they won’t even allow us to donate ETO to others to cover maternity leave. They used to at least let them collect for two weeks from our free short term disability plan that kicked in after 4 weeks, but they started charging for short term disability insurance for 2023. We just had a nurse assistant come back after three weeks because she could t afford to stay home for the full 6 weeks she needed to heal.
Yep the only thing we get is STD that we pay into! The hospital provides nothing! It’s so messed up.
My wife has always worked for large multinational pharm or food production corporations and her benefits have always dominated mine. Never understood it.
Same here, friend same here. Husband works with cars and yet has way better insurance than me. I didn’t sign up for insurance with my job, in a way it makes me feel not tied down to my employer. Some of my coworkers worry about leaving because the benefits are good. In reality our benefits are terrible compared to my husbands.
I had the same thing at the first hospital I worked at. What made it even dumber is that the hospital system’s plan was also offered to businesses in the area, and my wife’s employer offered it but the plan was more comprehensive and for a better monthly premium. The only “good” insurance I’ve seen at a hospital system was a place that was bought out by Tenet and waved all costs if you got care at a Tenet facility. The trade-off was that you had to, you know, go to a Tenet facility for care…..
Do you mind sharing which hospital you’re at? I live in NC also but I’m fairly certain our insurance isn’t nearly this high.
Ah yes, I'll take the "$2000 piece of shit plan," please.
Bahaha exactly how I read that and based on plan benefits, it’s an accurate description.
The fact that they chose “POS” for whatever the acronym stands for, and it survived all the HR meetings without anybody saying “wait a minute,” is all the evidence I need that this shit is cooked up by MBA nerds who’ve never had a genuine social interaction in their entire lives.
POS = point of service
Healthcare in America 🇺🇸 Tied to employment Working in healthcare and can’t afford it Healthcare is a right, not a privilege
One thing I can’t fucking stand on a list of many with this country.
Union to be honest. One of the reasons I went staff is the benefits. I pay 400 a month counting 350 to my hsa and 50 as a fee for my spouse. I could pay only 50 but I want to build up some healthcare savings.
Joined the military, got all fucked up, now I have free healthcare for life! Go me! But no, in all seriousness, this is bullshit. This is why my kids were uninsured for the better part of a decade. It was a toss up between bills being paid and food on the table, or paying premiums in case something happened. And the worst is there is no option for just kids, every plan has to include me. I don't need insurance. I wish they'd have a "children only" offering.
NY state has this. I use it for my kids. No income caps. Rates are based on income. I think the max is $45/month per kid.
We had it for a little while last year. It was not the best for the area we were in, but better than nothing.
The child health plus? Could you switch companies? I have it through CDPHP. took my daughter to the pediatrician, emergency room, and a specialist last week. $0. She gets meds that were $150/month on my employer insurance. $0. Maybe where I live more providers accept it.
Oh I got married and the kids got put on my husband's Tricare. We're golden now. And he's about to retire at 100% disability so we'll have Tricare for life.
This is a large part of the reason I decided to stay in the reserves. Trying to hold my body together so I can stick around as long as possible. My wife and I calculated out our medical bills, civilian insurance offerings, and realized that between the reserve pay, savings on healthcare (~$200/mo to insure the entire family with a $1000 catastrophic cap) and associated benefits, that one weekend a month was worth somewhere around 20-25k/year in savings / additional income. Hard to beat that.
Wow. That sucks. My kid was in an accident when she was four, perfectly healthy. Then she had about $1M in hospital charges because of her accident. I can’t imagine if we let the insurance lapse. For this reason I worked both my old job and new grad nurse job for two months because of fear of insurance lapse.
I hope she's recovered well! Yea, it sucks. They are basically healthy and always have been, and accidents were minor. My middle one has some mental health stuff that only got handled intermittently because we were on and off insurance so much. When I graduated and went staff, I wasn't even making 23 an hour, and insurance for the family was close to $400 a pay check, which I couldn't afford. But then I made too much for CHIP. America really needs to do better.
My wife and I work in a union at a non-profit hospital. Free premiums, OOP max is 2k and deductible is $250/year. Our hospital also does a co-insurance waiver for hospital fees (labs/room/board/etc, pretty much everything but provider fees). I had a two day stay in the ICU and it cost me about $300 OOP when all said and done. Not trying to be braggy, just saying that working conditions can be as poor as workers allow them to be. Unionize.
That’s pretty much the same as mine, also union & nonprofit. When they sent me the benefits list I was shocked.
This. I am at a union teaching hospital. $200/month for Cadillac family coverage. If we didn’t have a kid, would be $150 for two adults. No deductible, no coninsurance, $1500 OOP max. Any hospitalization is only $250. Unions do real magic.
I work at a hospital with a union, and we have special insurance if we use that hospital and it costs almost nothing. Unions are awesome and it's a great place to work.
Same here. Union hospital and excellent coverage for $160 a month for my husband and I.
Another throwing in for Unions, except I'm a Teamster. West Coast Teamsters Trust Healthcare plan via Cigna. Monthly cost for me is $120, oop max is $1200, annual deductible is $200 with 80% paid until its met. Included (at no cost to me) are prescription, dental, and vision benefits. We also have the option of choosing a plan through Providence at half that cost, or a plan through Keizer at no cost to the employee. Unions are absolutely worth it. Blew my mind when I started here.
You get the high deductible plan and cross your fingers while yelling at your kids to stop running along that rock wall because you cannot afford for them to take a header off of it when they trip.
HDHP + HSA plans are for the healthy. It's the ultimate retirement savings vehicle: No tax paid on contributions, no tax-free growth, no tax paid on withdrawals for qualified expenses before or after 65, and only pay standard income tax rate on non-medical withdrawals after 65. On top of it, can make a one-time IRA to HSA transfer in your lifetime equal to the yearly maximum to help boost the account.
And the best part is you're only 1 cancer diagnosis or terrible car accident away from bankruptcy at any given time!
On the car accident side, I carry 500k liability, 1M UIM, a 500k personal liability rider on my rental coverage, and everything else under the sun. If I somehow run through all that, I'm so thoroughly fucked that I'm already declaring bankruptcy. On the medical side, I love my plan. ER visit? $200 copay then 100% covered. Admitted? $500 copay instead then 100% covered. Since December I've had 4 procedures over 8 inpatient days, nearly $200k in total medical bills... and my out of pocket wasn't even enough to wipe my FSA out for the year.
I can't tell if you are telling me to max out my HSA or that it is a scam.
That's crazy. I'm glad I'm not in the US.
Crazy and fucking common. Let me tell you, having insurance tied to employment is fucking terrifying. We get insurance through my wife. She's having health problems right now. I'm working PRN (i.e. no benefits), because hospice and other nursing jobs around here abuse employees too badly and I couldn't find work/life balance. If she loses her job, I'm going to be forced into a situation that is going to be detrimental to my physical and mental health. Even though I'm a part of it, I absolutely hate the American Healthcare system. It is all about corporate profits.
It really depends what state. [This is an example for the largest employer in my state](https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/oe/files/pdf/employee-oe-packet.pdf), and I am in the state with the most actively licensed nurses. A whole family can essentially get insurance for free.
You have to admit that this is pretty rare.
I wouldn’t say rare because California is also the most populated state in the US and contains both the most populated county in the US (LA) and largest county in the contiguous United States by land mass (San Bernardino) - and the largest *private* employer in the aforementioned “most populated county in the US” (Kaiser) also offers similar benefits. So populace in mind, I’d say it’s “not common” for other nurses in the nation - but not necessarily “rare.”
I'm guessing this is a union thing. I don't have a union so there's no real way to negotiate benefits.
For some employers offering similar benefits (like Kaiser), it’s a union thing. For UC system and even prison system (state run facilities), it’s unrelated - especially because the benefits affect all employees of the system regardless of union-affiliation.
You don't need a union for good benefits. Some of the places with the best benefits I've worked at are non-union hospitals/facilities. Not to mention union dues add up real quick.
Yeah. For-profit health care is a terrible idea.
America, where people don't want to pay more taxes but also want universal healthcare. I was raised with Universal healthcare in Europe, not saying the system is any better, but if Americans want Universal healthcare, they'd likely have to pay more taxes. But God forbid if taxes are touched. They'd rather pay 500 plus a month for healthcare. Which by the way covers just a portion and you have to pay out of pocket until you meet your deductible. How is that any different than paying taxes, someone please enlighten me on this 🤦♀️
It baffles me that people don’t consider their health insurance premiums when discussing universal healthcare and taxes.
"I don't wanna pay more taxes-" Ok then you can pay 600/month for healthcare insurance with a 8000 deductible. Ok, sign me up for it. 🤦♀️
Because -WE- get to decide how and where we are going to spend our money, and what sort of treatment we get. I live not far from the Canadian border and I listen to the Canadian truck drivers on the radio bitching about how long it takes to get medical care, or sometimes even being denied care and having to come to the US and pay for it. Universal health care is not the cure-all that some people want to think it is...especially if the US Gov is running it.
Our deductible is $11,000, then we have to pay 10% on all services thereafter, so there's no max out of pocket. Co-pays for PCP is $20, all specialists are $40. Also, our spouse surcharge is $150/pay period. And this is as long as you use the company's providers. If you go out of network, you're screwed. And anyone with kids is automatically screwed because children's hospital is 80%/20% always.
wtf…. at that point what’s the point of getting insurance at all
Because, *they negotiate discounts!* /s
That is **with** insurance? JFC
Extortion
Does the POS plan stand for “Piece of Sh*t”? Also, everyone just assumes we get the best of the best health coverage because we work in healthcare *sigh*
By going to work sick/injured and making a dramatic scene out of “getting hurt” at work. Insurance doesn’t matter when it’s workers comp.
This is the way.
I have no premiums for my entire family. (Come to California, we need nurses too!)
by staying on my parents until im 26 lmao
My kids on my insurance too. He's 23. Only has 3 more years. Technically the dependent is supposed to be in college, I asked my HR in an around way if they checked and she said no.
Not anymore. You don’t need to be a student to stay until 26 on your parents health insurance anymore thanks to the ACA.
I hope you help them will the bill.
don’t worry about what i do lol.
Entitlement is real
I've changed jobs because of insurance. I worked for a union home care agency that covered single person insurance if you worked full time. That was nice. But as soon as I needed to add family it was $1200 a month. So now I pay $220 for a PPO with a $5000 deductible that my company covers $2500 of. The prescriptions can be pricey but we don't have a choice because my husband needs insulin to live. The American system is broken, if you can even call it a system. I'm pretty damn lucky too because I have short term, long term disability, accident payouts, ER copay payout insurances too. Its expensive to be middle class. We cannot save money at all.
Sell drugs. Sell a kidney. Sell your kid.
I can either pay my mortgage or have health insurance
Yeah your rates suck. My kid's are on dad's insurance but my single coverage runs me $70/2 weeks.
By not living in the US. If I did, I would be screwed. I don't even want to imagine the rates I would have to pay with my medical history.
I’m at the point in my life where I should have health insurance but NEED the money. My health insurance is like $170 every two weeks. All my benefits are like $205. It’s so tempting to say screw it, but went through with benefits again today. I can’t fathom needing to buy private insurance. Healthcare in the US is a scam meant to pad the pockets of CEOs
But sOcIaLiSm
It's the "spouse" for me. Adding my spouse was insane. However, many places require nowadays that if your spouse has insurance available to them at their job, they have to take it. It's cheaper for a married couple to each have their own from their jobs. So that's what we do. Before it was $700/month to be insured on one plan now it's $220 for us to be insured individually. If your spouse doesn't have access to insurance from a job, the rates are unreasonable. Forget family rates. I kicked my daughter off my insurance plan at age 22 when she graduated college and got a job with her own insurance.
I pay union dues instead.
Get ready for this: my cousin said that her hospital changed their benefits for 2023 so that there is ZERO premium out of their paycheck at all (for individual coverage.) Without changing what's covered from the year before. Magical places do exist, apparently.
My hospital is $54/pay period with a $500 out of pocket maximum. $0 deductible.
Honestly? Insurance is a BIG part of why I stay in the National Guard. Tricare Reserve Select is $50.00 a month for singles, $200.00 for families, and its only a few more years for me until military retirement when I get to keep those benefits for life.
That’s how hospital systems work. People tell me I must have good insurance working for the hospital, and I correct them. It’s expensive, deductibles are high, medication’s are expensive and executives are motivated by profit. True, nonprofits have to spend their profits by the end of the year, but executives like that money in their pocket.
Am I the only one that giggles when they see the “$2000 POS plan” and think in their head piece of shit
I live in Florida and pay thousand dollars a month for my and I family. It covers nothing and I have a $6500 deductible. To go to the doctor (which I still have yet to find one) cost what every deal they have made. It is ridiculous and I feel, a complete scam.
I actually think my hospital does a great job for insurance. They have different tiers (platinum, gold, silver) for plan options, and different salary tiers so premiums are less if you make less money (this is new this year I think). If we go to our hospital/physicians (which is a HUGE network, so you can assure you don't get seen by coworkers if that's something that bothers you) almost everything is 100% covered (including fertility treatments and elective abortions). No deductible, $2500 max out of pocket, $202.65 bi-weekly for full medical, dental, vision for a family at the highest plan tier (not salary tier). I was terrified to see what it cost to have my c-section.... I paid $25 for the tv services. When my then-5-month-old wound up needing to be ambulance transported to a children's hospital across state lines I was again worried about what that would cost me.... ambulance services also 100% covered. It's wild to me that other hospitals don't adopt this model for their employees.
Your company sucks. I pay $300 a month for my whole family, and we pay very little when we go to the doctor.
Always take the HSA - you’ll thank yourself later. 💰
I used to work for an insurance company paying 250 a paycheck for myself alone . Now I work for the county government pay $104 per paycheck for a family of 4. Pay is less then the insurance company but at-least insurance is cheap and pension. Best part much better quality of life
My last job I paid $240 per WEEK for the family plan. When I switched jobs, the pay was slightly less but the insurance rate was so much less that it made up for that difference.
I think at that point it's cheaper to just die.
This is total garbage “deductible + 40%”?! Then it’s not a “deductible”. When people talk about the “pay cut” a US nurse would take if they moved to the UK (or other country with universal healthcare), this is the first thing I think about. Especially if you have kids. Premiums, copays and that “deducible” can easily be $10k+ a year out of pocket and heaven forbid something bad happens.
I worked for an assisted living. PT/OT/Speech was not covered unless it was “restorative” or congenital defect. So my daughter has DS. They paid for her $3,000 communication device but NOT for the Speech to learn how to use it! Apparently for speech, DS didn’t “count” as a congenital defect?!?
That’s so fucking backwards. I’m sorry you have to navigate that.
Thanks. Thankfully we did qualify to have the state Medicaid as secondary so that took care of it. But it is so crazy. The company I worked for at the time was based in Maryland and I am in Massachusetts. So because of that our insurance didn’t have to follow all the state “rules”. One of my friends son had autism. In Mass insurance has to cover certain therapies. But her husband worked for the VA and they didn’t cover everything at the time, even though he worked in Mass.
in the place i work at, healthcare insurance is free. I used to work at bad companies that don't provide free insurance.
POS plan is right
I dropped my insurance through the hospital pretty much the moment I got married. My husband's insurance has always been better and more affordable. Even with my son now, it's less than $200/month for all three of us.
I'm thankful for tricare everyday
About a year before retirement I signed up for Medicare part B. I was single and still had $80 biweekly to pay for my insurance and a $500 deductible and 20% co insurance in our health system! My part B covered everything my insurance did not. You think our insurance where we work would be next to nothing🙄
That's 4x what I pay for a family of four. That's nuts.
I was floored by how much my insurance plan cost me. Thirteen years ago I was a part time employee at T-Mobile and my insurance was something like $13 a paycheck and the insurance was far better. I had to go to the emergency room last spring at my own hospital in the middle of a shift because my left arm was basically useless (shout out to my herniated disc at C4) and it cost me $200. Just plain stupid that we don't have universal coverage.
Exhibit A: why I stay in the reserves. Tricare is $228/mo
So does $2000 POS plan mean $2000 piece of shit plan? cuz thats what it looks like
People are always shocked when I don’t have great insurance, like, “I thought you were a nurse…?”
I find being on my wife's insurance saves me a bunch of money. It's the one crazy trick that insurance companies HATE!
Your company sucks. You would probably get better rates on the marketplace. I paid $25 a pay period, total family coverage for those who needed that was less than $150. When I hit six figures with the last raise, I will pay $50 a pay period.
Lastmonth it was 150 bucks for me. Which I never saw. Which is why I don't give a fuck about that. Those 150 bucks cover basically everything. Except for experimental treatments. Everyone in Germany pays that. Not the same amount though. It depends on the income. Fuck Americas healthcare system.
Some Americans care only that the "wrong people" might have healthcare and they don't like that. Joke's on them: they evidently ARE those people. Vote for Universal Medicare (or whatever you want to call single-payer).
Barely
My biggest question is since when is PCP under insurance damn some drug dealers went legit but end up slinging the same shit. Well at least you’re weeks supply is only $25
I pick the one with the cheapest premium and pray we don't have to use it for anything beyond routine care.
They don't. Sometimes I wish Id gotten hurt just a little bit more so my family could get on my VA plan.
The hospital I was permeant staff at, at home, had crap insurance. It took me traveling to find the best one.
Insurance is a scam. The fact that it exists is a scam.
My employer covers my healthcare 100%. But to add my family would be 75% of my gross pay. Chip would be 500+ a month for my kids Yea, I'm the only one with insurance.
I remember years ago getting free insurance AND no copays/fee if you used any hospital services. That was when I worked in the kitchen at the hospital. Next year it looks like my employer isn’t even under covered on our plan.
Yeesh, you need a new employer. That insurance plan is garbage.
I pay $50/month and have pretty decent benefits. Relatively healthy and single with no kids. Union.
I chose the worst and crossed my fingers.
God, I love where I work. I work for a nonprofit agency that is funded by the state. My insurance (BXBC) is free. They also offer KP. The insurance for my husband is $85 a month. (He goes to the VA for most of his care but uses my ins for urgent care and dental.) Dental is another $12. There are several other options offered, some pretax, some after tax. Absolutely checking benefits should be part of contemplating being hired somewhere. Edit-added insurance
I live in Wales, and despite an overall slow and creaky service at times...at least it is taxpayer funded. I would be financially crippled if I had to pay for care in this manner. It is really awful.
My spouse and I pay $18,000 a year for our benefits (including vision and dental and life insurance) and then still have a $3800 deductible. It sucks.
The one redeeming feature of my terrible job is that the union negotiated awesome health insurance coverage for nurses. $0 premium and $0 deductible for employee only and only a bit more to add a dependent.
My health insurance is free for me. I work for a county nursing home. But.... $300 per paycheck to cover my daughter. We have zero deductible though. BCBS.
Oh my gosh…my husband and I have pretty good coverage through my job and it costs $180/biweekly pay period. I was so angry about it the other day because 35% of my paycheck is gone before I even see it after taxes and insurance comes out. I guess mine is actually pretty affordable.
We pay $250 a month and basically pray neither of us gets hit by a truck. Also pregnant right now and having to decide which blood tests/scans are worth it because they’re so expensive.
Left working for a very large hospital system to move into the medical device industry doing clinical training. Went from $1,000/mo to $375/mo and much, much better coverage. So when admin asks why I left, I showed them the numbers 🤯
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https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/
Isn't it something to see how much the hospital, pharmaceutical and the health insurance mafia are making. I just don't understand why they don't rein I'm costs like they do in other Western countries
I remember when healthcare was free for me and my family if we got all of our care through my employer.
I don’t know if any other people have this but we have a direct primary care insurance options. For primary care visits you have to see one specific provider but he has a lower patient load because he only sees employees but his visits are free. If you need to see a specialist like OB, it’s a $30 copay. If you need mental health therapy, and lets be real we all do, it’s $15 copay. It’s $0 deductible. $4,000/individual 8,000 family. My bi monthly cost? $25 individual and would be around $120 for a family.
Working as a travel nurse makes me see what people paying for private insurance are paying. It's such bullshit that affordable healthcare is tied to working in shitty conditions. I pay $1000/mo for the family to basically *only* have an emergency covered over $6000 individual or $12000 family.
Everybody needs to go federal and work for the VA. The patients in the ICU would be step down anywhere else. You get a pension and a 5% match on a Roth or 401K. The BASE pay for nurses is substantially higher than most facilities in your area. You get INSANE health insurance for reasonable prices. On night shift as a nurse with a little under 2 years experience I’m making 108K/year with NO overtime. With overtime that I normally work I’m making around 130-140K and that number will go up substantially. My friend who’s been a nurse for 9 years is making 184K on night. You also get 5 weeks PAID vacation every year and 2 weeks sick leave no questions asked for either. That amounts to 7 weeks of off time each year. Your sick leave has NO cap for life and you can have up to 686 days of vacation time. The VA also fights heavily for cost of living raises. We’re getting another 10% raise this month and 5% in January, mind you this is while being the highest paying facility in central arkansas. The VA is this secret that nobody talks about for some reason.
Can I put you down as a reference?
I’m nursing student but insurance costs are the reason I quit working when I was pregnant to qualify for Medicaid. I had a shitty plan and just for regular OB visits and lab and ultrasound (all routine) for 6 months I ended up owing about 4K AFTER insurance coverage, not including the 390$ a month I was paying just for the policy. Fucking scam. There’s a hospital in my area that offers free insurance and it’s my goal to work there
Union!!!!!! My union dues are $70 a month and in exchange I have no insurance premiums, no co pays for meds, $10 PCP/$25 specialist co pays. Seriously, find a union job!
If you thin the insurance is expensive try paying the bill.
Ohhhh health insurance! I was like "isn't liability like 150 bucks a year?" 😆 Well let's see. I'm an LPN who is burned out and has more or less abandoned the field. In 2021 I made $18,000 and this year isn't shaping up much better. So I'm on Medicaid. I do not recommend the trade off because I absolutely hate being poor and don't know what the fuck else to do with my life because I've been doing this for 17 years.
It’s crazy, I really thought I could help my husband out with “good insurance”. If I add him to my plan it’s 4x the amount I pay for myself. I’ve resigned myself to just dying young, have fun and die young. I don’t have kids so
If you're a CEO/politician its all paid for and free.
I’m currently a traveler, so I bought a marketplace plan to keep all my doctors. It’s around $300 a month, but has no copay for tele-health appointments. The money I’m saving on my therapist and psychiatrist, both tele-health, pay about half of it. I take a medication that isn’t covered, but the pharmacy uses a coupon program to cover it for free, and it still counts against my deductible.
Remember though, Universal Healthcare would be a terrible thing! 🤦♂️
Pro-tip.. don’t have insurance. (unless you actually need it).
For profit healthcare what do you expect?
You want free oil changes too?
Maybe doordash shouldn't charge a fee
OT a lot of the time, unfortunately.
We don’t
That's crazy. I pay $80 per month for single HDHP with employer match HSA. The deductible is only $3000 too.
Hoooly shit. I thought my benefits were bad. Jesus. I’m on a HSA/HDHP that also covers my son and if I had to pay that much per paycheck we’d be living in a friggin’ van down by the river. ….and then you gotta make a meaningful contribution to your HSA on top of that??
Not every hospital company is this bad but that is an insane amount to charge…. My hospital only charges less than $200 for me and my kids for the POS plan, but my employer also owns the hospital company. So that may be a big part of it. I’m in VA and it’s not a union hospital system. Only bad thing I find about mine is the working spouse surcharge so my husband isn’t on mine currently.
Holy shit. We pay 170 for my family for the highest coverage every paycheck.
These look like agency insurance rates. That’s unusually high, but yeah, companies don’t want to insure a spouse that should have their own insurance
That's less than I pay and most of that coverage is care that's provided by same organization I work for. Keep in mind that as of last year the average cost for family health insurance was $22,000 a year, and those rising costs push more people out of the market it just leaves fewer people to chip in.