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Return to Article: 'Consumer-directed' health plans attracting healthier feds

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  "Let me just say that you are so dead wrong. You have no clue what real health care costs are or can be."

  As a health insurance underwriter for a national health carrier for 16 years before joining the government I do know what real health care costs are and can be.

  I also know that if I experience a catastrophic illness/injury with single coverage in 2006 under the high deductible health plan my maximum out of pocket cost is $3,500. Someone with single coverage through basic Blue Cross experiencing the identical illness/accident has a maximum out of pocket of $5,000.

  If I'm healthy in 2006 I walk away with $1,500. If I'm healthy under the Blue Cross plan I walk away with nothing.

  GovExec.com reader Posted January 6, 2006 7:13 PM
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  This is the ultimate of adverse selection and another indication of how Congress and the government do not understand insurance and the law of large numbers! The healthy leave the system and pay no premiums. The remaining have greater health care costs relative to premiums collected. Result: premiums have to increase significantly. Those of us that have been in the system for a long time and paid for the health care of the elderly when we were young have no healthy young people paying a part of the cost now. Therefore, not only did we pay for the health care of older workers in the past, we now have to pay higher costs for our own care because Congress in its inability to know how to run an insurance program has allowed those with no claims to leave the system.

  Great decision Congress -- you idiots are ruining our health care and will ruin social security the same way! Now I am paying for those with private pensions that have gone bad, farmers who have crop failures, rebuilding Iraq, rebuilding New Orleans, providing loans to students and small businesses that should get their own money or do without, I paid for the S&Ls that went broke because the government did not know how to supervise them or examine them, the same is true for banks and credit unions, I pay far too much for weapons of mass destruction in the USA as well as weapons systems designed to fight Word War II again when we have not won a war since WWII but continue to try and reward our military commanders as if they win, we pay to cleanup the environment that other profit making companies have polluted but do not have to bear the costs of cleanup because their stockholders would find out they made a bad investment and the SEC has never enforced its own roles for companies to disclose this information.

  The time has come to reduce government to essential government services, military with better control, mint and treasury, foreign policy (not the State Department as it exists today) and health and pension for elderly as a supplement not as a sole source of funds. Also, we need term limits to eliminate professional politicians!

  Taxpayer Posted January 6, 2006 7:04 AM
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  Let me just say that you are so dead wrong. You have no clue what real health care costs are or can be. I fear that many are simply playing Russian Roulette because they are young and/or healthy. However, when a real health care crises emerges, and let's face it, sooner or later it will happen, the out of pocket payments can be devastating! For instance, what do you think you out of pocket costs would be if you were diagnosed with cancer? Or if you had a heart attack or stroke? Or any illness requiring extended care, long-term rehabilitation, etc. Please don't be swayed by OPM or an insurance company's information. Reevaluate your options.

  GovExec.com reader Posted January 5, 2006 11:30 PM
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  I signed up for a high deductible health plan with a HSA in 2005 because my husband and I were healthy and generally only went to the doctor for an annual checkup. 2006 turned out to be a year of unexpected illnesses and accidents and we both needed health care more than we had in the past.

  Even with more than average health care issues in 2005 we still ended up spending less out of pocket than if we had enrolled in the BC/BS! It was surprising to find out that a physician office billed the insurance carrier $220 and the negotiated rate I paid from our HSA was $72. With the government funding $2,500 in the HSA, we still haven't paid any money out of pocket, not for drugs, doctor visits or diagnostic testing. You don't have to have a graduate degree to figure out the math or be 100 percent healthy to reap the rewards of an HSA and high deductible plan.

  GovExec.com reader Posted December 22, 2005 8:39 PM