Some plans also have a subscriber plus one plan for married couples without children and you can usually save about $100 a month if that's an option. I have no kids and so I would take this option if I could but it's not available to me in my small group. Note the huge difference based on the size of your group. $1200 to $1800 is an additional 50% if you can't get into a good sized group.

Also note that health insurance can be setup to be paid as pretax money which is effectively a 33% savings at my tax rate, but this option is usually not available in individual coverage.

It does seem most folks outside the US don't understand the concept of group coverage. Basically you get a volume discount based on how many people are being insured by the same entity. This is usually your employer who may (or may not) pay a portion of your health insurance premium. If so then you usually get paid less to compensate. In reality the employee pays for their own insurance one way or another. But if you work for a large employer you get cheaper insurance than if you work for a small employer and even cheaper still than if you're self employed and have to get individual coverage.

Individual coverage means that you are not part of any group. Single coverage means that you're insuring only yourself.

so group effectively means employer or possibly a group of companies that banded together as a group. so why is it less expensive for larger firms? it does not make any spontaneous sense to me, but surely someone somewhere had a reason for it.

also the possiblity of setting it up as pre-tax money deducted sounds interesting.

on the whole though it does seem a bit more expense than the systems here. I'd have to check our details again, but there is definately an upper floor beyond which you pay only a fixed amount regardless of income and there should be some modifications at the lower end too to make it more affordable. that said, average income is a bit higher in the US than in most euro countries, I think some 40k $ to some 32k$, but those numbers are out there to check.

and you are not quite correct. it's not that I don't understand the concept of group coverage, I just don't think I ever heard of it. barring a convincing explanation and reasoning I also say that it's a pretty weird and pointless construct, but let's see.

It all depends on where you live. If I made $50,000 a year living where I currently live I would essentially be at the poverty level. However someone making $50,000 in some rural area, let's say somewhere in Kansas, would be considered very well off. However the same job will pay more in a high cost of living area than in a lower cost of living area. It's all relative.

In my area the threshold for making a decent living is probably $100,000 per year. But you can get this with one high income earner or two medium income earners. This is essentially what has happened to the middle class in the US. Both husband and wife usually must work to come close to a decent standard of living and if one or the other loses their job then they can quickly get seriously in debt.

If I had to guess healthcare expenses for the "average" american worker are probably close to 20% of their income. But like I said this is just a guess.

Hmm ... I have to look up how exactly family insurance works in germany. Kids usually get to benefit from the parents health insurance automatically as long as they are living at home and never had to pay for insurance themselves (so something like that).

But I think every adult is treated individualy with the public insurance (which is mandatory unless you can afford private insurance, btw).

However, I started a new thread here:

The personal Cost of Health Care - An international comparison

I started with picking apart german income and deductibles to demonstrate how much health care costs us as a person.

I'd like to get data from other countries for comparison.

I quote this, too, solely to highlight its comic value (and irony).

Aroddo -

That was an observation, not an accusation.

This is an incredible self-contradiction.

What, no one comments on the cost of health care?

I even supplied a perfectly representive example for personal health care cost and the worth of the money in relation to national product costs - yet no comment apart from pointless bitching?

The August 20th Daily Show Interview covers cost on a limited scale, but mostly covers the "death panel" debate. Clips are a little broken up, so to watch the entire interview, scroll down to the part 1 interview and then do the part 1 and 2 at the top.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

At the beginning of the Part 1 at the top, Stewart reads the controversial passage, lets McCaughey respond, and then says she has it completely misinterpreted. After relistening to the passage (Stewart reads it a little fast) I realized that McCaughy interpretation is fairly unrelated. The passage relates to the secretary's relation to the data of measures such as "orders and adherence to life-sustaining measures."

How can she then talk about forcing doctors to put pressure on patients? What?

Another kicker in the interview was the beginning of Part 2 at the top. The first comments are in reference to Obama's desired cuts to Medicare to tone the exponential growth down a bit. After referring to how Reagan said Medicare (which they both agreed was a good system) was going to create socialism, Stewart then asks if McCaughey ernestly believed that those in the government wanted to kill your grandparents. She said yes.

So can someone please explain to me why people in government want to kill your grandma?

PS. A recent poll showed that 45% of Americans believe that the bill creates a "death panel."

There are certainly disparity in the kinds of people that tend to hang out at Stardock's different sites. Basically I avoid posting to threads that exist only on Joe User because I've found that in general I don't particularly care to associate with most folks there. I will make an exception in limited circumstances but it's more the exception that proves the rule.

Just watched the full episode. I'm gonna miss Jon Stewart in the next three weeks. I bet now that he's going on vacation, all the really crazy stuff is going to happen.

oh. maybe it's like that. I moved it to stardock off-topic.

https://forums.stardock.com/361910

Anyway, what kind of deductibles do americans have?

And what do you think of the personal cost of german health care? Cheap or expensive?

What does that have to do with altruism?

Peter's belief that Paul ought to pay for Paddy's healthcare is not altruism.

An altruist wouldn't need a public healthcare system. A public healthcare system is only needed when non-altruists want a healthcare system.

Altruists would pay for the system. Non-altruists with the same goal would try to find a way to get others to pay for it.

That's likely and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

That seems likely.

That's pro and con. Both sides have allies who have to gain and to lose.

I find this more of an argument for the pro side: Why should I have to pay for my healthcare when you can do it?

The actual argument is that government shouldn't do healthcare because that's simply not what government's job is.

That's a good argument for pro and con (and any other system that advocates saving American lives for a lot of money rather than saving more African lives for less money).

This is not about arguments pro/con health care reform.

It's about the possible motives the pro/con factions might have to either support or fight it.

That's how I understood it.

I am just thinking that "altruism" is a weird motive for demanding that others pay for one's healthcare.

To me "altruism" is the opposite of that. If I were an altruist, I would demand that I pay for others, not the other way around.

Family Coverage = $1,600 per month

Deductibles = $1,000 per year per person/$2,000 per year per family

Copays = $20 Primary Care Physician (PCP) office visit, $30 Specialist office visit (requires prior PCP approval), $100 ER visit

Prescriptions = $10 for month for generic drugs, $20 per month for preferred non-generic drugs, $30 per month for non-preferred non-generic drugs.

But like I mentioned someone could conceivably pay anywhere between $1,000 and $2,000 a month dependent on the size of the group that they're in.