Insurance and the New Health Care Bill Part 2 - Blue Cross/Blue Shield of GA

I would like to share a post that I made on Freedom With Fibro, the fulltiming fibromyalgia blog that I have.....until we rein in the insurance companies and the charges for healthcare we will all continue to suffer. If anyone has any good thoughts or ideas to post, please do! Somehow, some way we need to give everyone access to timely and reliable health care but it seems like a losing proposition right now. Let me know your thoughts on this matter as it is something I am very passionate about as I live with two pre-existing conditions but deserve to be able to AFFORD insurance the same as anyone else.

We received some information from Bill's company about the health insurance that is offered to some of the employees. I hesitate to even call it health insurance at all as it is basically only good for health catastrophes. This insurance for the eligible employees would go into effect on September 1 although the benefit year runs with the calendar. So basically there would only be three months in which to try and make the deductible for 2010.



To start it off the cost for an employee and spouse would be $714.18 monthly or $164.81 per week. The real kicker is that there is a $9,000 deductible! Now I can understand one OR the other....high premium and low deductible or low premium and high deductible but this plan is HIGH premium and HIGH deductible! It is almost not doable for most people.


Then to add insult to injury if you have not had insurance for the 63 days leading up to September 1st there is a 12 month pre-existing condition clause which says that any illness or injury that has been treated in the 6 months prior to September 1st will not be covered until the member has had the insurance for a year. So in some cases people will be paying this huge premium, have a huge deductible and not have anything covered for the most pressing needs -- the illnesses or injuries that they already have. Granted medications are not included in the exclusion but with the Walmart $4 prescriptions many of the associated costs of taking meds have dropped significantly especially if the meds are generic.


So to put it into real numbers here is what it would cost us to get insurance from the company.

$714.18 x 12 = $8,570.16 Yearly Premium


$9,000 Deductible


$17, 570.16 Total Baseline Out of Pocket

$9,000 Maximum Out of Pocket From 80/20 Coinsurance

$26, 570.16 Total Out of Pocket Until Insurance Covers 100%


THIS is why the health reform bill did not go far enough. These costs are ridiculous.