What are your health insurance premiums and how do you buy your insurance?
 

I'm 59 and recently wondered if it was possible for me to retire before age 65 so I looked up the health insurance premiums for the plans offered by my pension plans for pre-65 yrs old health insurance. We have an 18 yr old daughter.
The costs for a family ranged from $2318 -$1839 per month depending on the option you choose and the level of deductible in the plan. The cheapest plan has a $5000 deductible per person per year for instance. For just my wife and I the plans ranged from $1632-1314. Some of the plans only cover care in a limited geographical area, except for emergencies. The limit on coverage on all the plans is $2.5 million.
I'm currently paying $1413 thru my employer for a plan with what I consider very high co-pays. For instance, our co-pay is $600 per day for a hospital visit with a maximum ofr $1200 per visit. It's $35 to visit the doctor $200 for an ER and $60 for urgent care.
These numbers don't include any employer subsidy. They're the raw numbers for what the insurance plan costs.
I know I'm a frugal guy, but those figures seem outrageous to me. One month of health insurance is higher than the yearly property taxes on our home. So, I'm curious as to what others are paying and how you purchase it. Do you get your health insurance thru your employment? How much is it? If you don't get it thru your employment, how have you gone about purchasing it?

Be thankful for small favors. Where I came from (Long Island) it's not uncommon for property taxes to equal HI premiums

I can get insurance for myself through my state retirement system for around 600 a month. If I add my wife and son, who is 19, the price skyrockets for some reason. Both are younger and healthier than I am.
I switched my coverage to my wife's policy with her employer as it was quite a bit less expensive. If she should lose her job I can go back onto retirement system coverage any time under a "qualifying event" definition and not have to wait till open enrollment. We have the second lowest tier policy for all three of us. It has decent 80/20 coverage, 25/75 dollar charges for office visits and emergency room, and maximum 40 dollar prescription copays. Max out of pocket is 5K per person on hospitalization.The only script I routinely take is 5 dollars.
I don't know exactly how it all breaks down but we have HI for the three of us, dental for the three of us, vision for my wife and me and a few other odds and ends like accidental death and dismemberment coverage etc. and the whole shooting match is a tick over 400 a month.
Some of this cost is offset by a benefit that my school district pays retirees until they reach medicare age. I get a quarterly check for 480 dollars, nominally to offset the cost of insurance but I'm free to use it as I see fit. There always seems to be a gun I want or good deals on whiskey right around the time that check arrives.

For individual plans, I am anywhere from $60-300 a month depending on coverage. I am shopping around for insurance at the moment and will need to grab something within the next week or two so this thread is high on my interests. At the moment I work at a major health insurer, where my premium is covered 100% but the coverage sucks (I have nothing to do with claims or benefits or anything, I'm an email system admin). Thankfully I am leaving the company and the industry as of Thursday...good riddance. Still need to have HI though. Kerry those premiums seem very high to me but I don't have a family to cover so idk....

I am 25, healthy, no preexisting conditions. I don't think my situation is applicable to most on this forum but figured I'd throw it in anyways.

If you plan to do some business after retirement, have you looked at Freelancers' Union and their insurance?

Our daughter is currently studying in Canada (BC) and is eligible for the regular Canadian health care system since she is a dual citizen. Her cost is $64 a month as a student. Not sure what the non-student rate is. I think less than $150 per month.

Are you a dual citizen? Move back up there - better than the Yank Septic Tank in many ways.

Not a dual citizen.

Sell everything and expatriate to a country that's not a c untery.

I'm 27 and I'm paying $235 a month for a 5k deductible plan, which really doesn't cover a whole lot. Also it seems to go up 10%-20% a year.

For the age group your daughters premiums probably more than cover her actual usage. I even suspect a probable profit. She will have absolutly no copays or exclusions from any treatment if needed.

I just included this to indicate that the premium that is being paid for Kerrys daughter as a foreign national is all inclusive basically. In a way there should be no charge at all as she has to pay the sales taxes while living here. They were the intended funding medium of the so called universal health care plan.

Average about 15 percent on almost all things you purchase with the exception of non prepared food, housing, and prescriptions basically. If you do not make a reasonable income part of that is refunded several times a year. I do not know how many times.

My personal belief is that this is in place to prevent americans just crossing the border and registering for treatment on the spur of the moment. At the same time there might be some scams as there is no photo ID on our health cards. Providers basically want your number for billing is about it.

If an american got my card and used it with any provider that did not really know him it would probably work in my opinion. It suprised me that there is no photo id on the card.

I pay about $53 a month for health insurance through the Navy reserve. My civilian employer offers coverage for $30 per two week pay period.

Even at $53 a month, I sometimes feel it's a waste, since I have yet to hit the $150 deductible. However, I remind myself I might get cancer or HIV or get hit by a truck one of these days. No way would I pay four figure monthly premiums.

I'm not following something in your post. My daughter is a Canadian. She's paying the standard price that BC students pay. Do you pay a monthly premium at all in NS? Is anything deducted from your paycheck?

I'm astonished at those numbers. What kind of coverage does your civilian employer offer? How much coverage do you get? I have a friend who works at Home Depot and we said his health insurance only covered up to $6k per yr and after that it was out of his pocket.

I never really looked into the coverage offered by my civilian employer, since I was already covered under Tricare Reserve Select, which is cheaper. I haven't heard anyone at work complain about it.