If you consider yourself in good health and avoid doing stupid things (which looks to be the case), save that money and bank it in case you need it. I'm almost 40 years older than you and have never needed any of the HI I've paid for over the years.

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'83 300D, 126K miles.

I don't want to take the chance that if I need something expensive I'll be wiped out.

If I didn't have anything I wouldn't care, can't get water out of a stone. But now that I have a few assets I really don't want a hospital coming after them for a bill.

At least I can deduct the expense off my taxes.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Same reason I'm still shelling out bucks for health care I don't use.

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Whoever said there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes never had a cheap Jaguar.

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 400,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 22,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.

You must be mistaken! Did you not hear that the ACA (affordable heath care act) has passed and will lower health care insurance cost for everyone.

It helped me in some areas and hurt in others.

What would really be nice is a nice national policy like in Canada.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

If only such a thing could be done in this day and age!

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TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

At least I'd get something out of my tax money rape every April.

Maybe I'd take the extra money and lease a Volt or something...

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

There is some varience from province to province obviously. I just was not aware of it. If I make a million a year still no monthly premium charge would occur. No nova scotian pays a dime directly. Premium wise, deductable or co pays. Except on prescription drugs where applicable.

Nor in any other maritime province to the best of my awareness. I unfortunatly assumed that was in effect across the country. Assuming is almost always dangerous, For example that your daughter was a foreign national because she was paying a premium. Kind of a suprise to me as well for any canadian citizen to pay a monthly premium.

So it is also obvious that all canadians do not have a direct cost free system. I wonder if the sales tax is lesser in British Columbia to compensate? The central government gives control of the health care and required funding to each province to directly run.

Certain deductables and co pays quoted in the states really disturb me. Many sound all too close to the total charges levied. For example the last time I took notice a hospital bed was billed to the system at around six hundred a day here in Nova Scotia. It is play money though as all hosptials are provincially owned. A simple methology to enable controls and planning. You have to have some means of keeping track of efficiency and other factors. Even when there is no profit motive.

We have to control medical costs in Canada without cheating the health care proffessionals out of comparable incomes to the states. Your surgeons may or may not be overpaid in comparison to ours. Our general practicioners do equally as well as yours or perhaps a little better.

I am the last guy to be down on the free enterprise situation in general. It just has no place in the health care arena. The abuse and games in the states are just all too obvious. If it was run in an honest fashion I would feel otherwise.

British columbia may be playing a game as well since they have premiums it seems. You do not need them in addition to the general funding supplied by the central government if you have an efficient operating methology. It may also be a plain and simple money grab by that province if they are efficient.

All the powers that be are trying to implement more and more costs on the locals in our region as time moves forward too. They see it done in many places and attempt the copy cat approach. Eventually it has to ruin a still semi good thing. The average citizen has no real input to prevent it.

Right at this time the efficiency of the medical service locally is always getting better and better. This they found is the best way to keep costs down. The system is the most streamlined it has ever been if you have a problem of any consequence.

I get my yearly check up for the cancer I had twelve years ago this week. My uroligist works several operating rooms simultainiously. There is no wait by him for the staff to clean the equipment or operating room. He just shifts to another operating table in another room that the cleaning of the equipment from the last patient in there was already done.

Same theory as a dentist with multipal chairs. Still when he is working on me we talk and there is no sense of rushing. At the same time I know his daily workload processed is very high numerically.

I think why guys like him are not burning out is all or most the perifial functions american uroligists would be faced with that consume time and give frustation to them are absent. The lack of this enables my doctors focus on patients to be absolute.

If you reside in a place like Toronto where the rapid continious imigration is and has outstriped the medical infustructure. There are going to be delays of all sorts and many problems with the service providers. Other than for serious issues that need care now. The politicians might be wise to reduce immigration levels until the infastructure can catch up. This has to be balanced against the need in Canada for a lot more people is the other issue. The aging of the general existing population is too pronounced without the immigration. We are tending to become too top heavy with older people as breeding continiously declines.

I happen to be considering retirement, and have similar numbers as Kerry, perhaps a bit better.

I am 58, looking to retire at 60 ( or may be forced out sooner due to sequestration)

I have 2 options

Premiums from my employer will be $1139/month for me, wife and kid. That is with a $500/head deductible, lifetime max $5M.

An alternate, cheaper plan is $669/mo, with a $2000/head deductible. My employer contributes quite a bit to these plans, and I have 32 years which discounts my plans to the max.

Having to shell out $15K/yr for health insurance is really what's keeping me working, at this point. I need to run out the clock and get closer to Medicare. If I was sure I wasn't going to need HI I would be long gone....

We need a system like Canada's. It's obvious that when you can get an MRI scheduled in a day that we have too many resources in our system that are underutilized.

Oh, and we need to cut the insurance companies out of the equation. They have no business making decisions on our lives based on their profitability.

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80 300SD (129k mi) 82 240D stick (193k mi)77 240D auto - stick to be (153k mi) 85 380SL (145k mi) 89 BMW 535i 82 Diesel Rabbit Pickup (374k mi) 91 Jetta IDI Diesel (155k mi) 81 VW Rabbit Convertible Diesel 70 Triumph Spitfire Mk III (63kmi)66 Triumph TR4a IRS (90k mi)67 Ford F-100 (??)

The reason many people's premiums increased significantly or even doubled last year, was that ACA mandated a standard level of total dollar coverage, by employers for their employees, that was essentially double what it was before.

The two companies I worked for in TX last year, in both cases the monthly premiums more than doubled from the year before, for the same plan - because they were forced to carry twice the total amount of coverage per employee.

My yearly Tricare Prime renewal form came last month. For the first time since I retired from the Navy 15 years ago, it had a 20% increase in yearly premiums - and a warning to expect similar increases each year for the forseeable future.

Not only that, but you can expect to see similar increases in auto, house, and other insurance coverage as well - my auto insurance, with the same company for the past 15 years, has been $500/six months for years - now suddenly with no other changes, it's jumped up to $580 - close to a similar 20% increase.

My friend in Charlotte, who used to work for one of the big three banks headquartered there, reported a similar increase for all of his insurance policies across the board.

His explanation was that thanks to the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates at rock bottom, the insurance companies weren't making any money off their investments in bonds and other government instruments - therefore the premium increases across the board to make up the difference.

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Just say "NO" to Ethanol - Drive Diesel

Mitchell Oates
Mooresville, NC
'87 300D 212K miles
'87 300D 151K miles - R.I.P. 12/08
'05 Jeep Liberty CRD 67K miles
Grumpy Old Diesel Owners Club

It's almost as if the Govt., via additional regulations and tax policies, is trying to make (sure) private health insurance is too expensive for the majority of people...

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1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)

ACA mandated a medical loss ratio (MLR) of at least 80% for small groups and 85% for larger group markets. If a company previously wasn't paying out at 80-85% at least, they would have to drastically increase the payout and/or decrease administrative costs which all contributes to an increase in premiums. Most major national/international insurers are well above the margin but also have ridiculously high administrative costs so that 15% or so is actually a huge expense. The 85% payout dictates how much money the company makes--basically, that cost is at the mercy of healthcare providers and not insurers. Many large insurers are massively fat administratively though, so thats where the focus has been in recent years.

tl;dr - healthcare going up across the board unfortunately.

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TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

I am part time at my employer and the coverage is part of the reason I chose to work here when I got out of the airline.

I'm paying $70 a month for my self and my wife. Annual deductible is 500 individual /1000 Family and Co-insurance deductible is $2,500/$5,000. Full time would be $200/$400 and $1,500/$3,000. After the deductible is met the plan pays 80%. Full time it pays 90%.

The $70 I pay also covers dental and vision. Guess I won't complain about it too much

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Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Our premiums went down this year.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

You're lucky! Ours is going up 20% across the board. Unless we decide to change providers AGAIN (3 times in 5 years). If the employees want to keep their current plan we might have to shift more of the burden over to them. We currently pay 75% of the premium, would probably have to drop that to 70%.

42yo with family coverage is going to $1266/month, of which I'm responsible for $316.50/month. $30/$45 co-pays with a $2500 deductible (as a company we decided to partially self-insure on the deductible to keep the plan cost down-employee pays the first $500 and the company pays the rest). It's a gamble that has worked in our favor the past two years, that streak could end at any point.

For folks in similar age brackets as yourself, the premium is $1850/month with family (they pay $462.50/month) or $1050/month without (they pay $262.50)

As a small business owner I'd love to see that $200K a year we spend on healthcare freed up to do something more productive. On a personal level, I afraid of what's going to happen to our taxes when we need to pay for national healthcare.

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1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)