A New York doctor friend of mine says patient visits have fallen dramatically — people stopped coming in after January 1, 2014. He and his colleagues are trying to figure out why. Hard to believe it doesn’t have something to do with Obamacare! … It could be a good thing –higher co-payments cause people to avoid unnecessary visits, the health cost curve starts bending, etc. (assuming the docs don’t just raise their fees to make up the difference). … It could be a bad thing, if the patients guess wrong about which visits are unnecessary. … It’s almost certainly a bad thing if the cause is patients who’ve lost their insurance. … Further journalistic investigation required. …Those are possible reasons, but certainly those aren't all the reasons. Time for a poll:
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
You know something is happening, but you don't know what it is
Mickey Kaus notices something:
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The co-pays and deductibles are staggering for a lot of folks, especially if they've had health insurance for awhile and are used to smaller co-pays.
For me, I knew I was likely to need a pretty big procedure this year. My policy at work gave me two options: a high-premium, low-deductible plan that would basically cover everything; and a lower premium, high-deductible plan. The latter has an individual deductible of $2500, after which the plan pays 80% and I pay 20% of the remaining cost - but with an out-of-pocket cap at $5k, after which the insurance pays 100%.
The thought of paying $5k, plus premiums, seemed daunting until I added up the total premiums for the low-deductible plan and compared it to the total premiums of the high-deduct plan, plus the max out of pocket. The latter came out about $1000 less expensive than the low-deduct plan. I have money going into an HSA (with a $1200 match from my ocmpany) to defray the out-of-pocket expenses.
It is still startling to pay 100% of the doctor's visit (even if it comes out of my HSA) but at least I know the "true" cost. Am I a more motivated consumer? You betcha. I went on-line and checked out prices and the quality outcome metrics for multiple facilities. As a result, I actually going to the Mayo - and for less than it would cost to have this done in the Twin Cities.
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