For thrifty consumers, there’s a lot to like in high-deductible health insurance. The plans offer low monthly premiums and those fees fully cover preventive care, including annual physicals, vaccinations, mammograms and colonoscopies, with no co-payments.
The downside is that plan participants must pay the insurers’ negotiated rate for sick visits, medicines, surgeries and other treatments up to a minimum deductible of $1,500 for individuals and $3,000 for families. Sometimes deductibles are much higher.
Let’s keep it civil.
The idea with high deductible plans is that the ordinary policyholder just pays out of pocket for everything in a normal year, but they’re covered against catastrophic loss in years when they get in a $50,000 car accident or need $750,000 worth of chemo and cancer treatments. The insurance might not provide much for the 30 or 40 years of your life in which you spend less than $1,000 per year on a few doctor’s visits, but it’ll pay for itself that one year when you’re paying $5,000 instead of $1,000,000.