scrubbedexpat097

$10 co-pay You must have a really good insurance. I haven't seen an $10 co-pays since the early 90's when people had HMO insurance plans that were small co-pay and no deductible but also only allowed to be used at certain facilities.

My co-pay now, with the evil Aetna, is $50 for a GP visit and $75 for a specialist

ChocolateBabz

No co-pays for me, just a $3000 deductible that I have to meet before insurance starts paying anything, then they cover 80%. It's horrendous!

durham_lad

Last year I had a trip to the ER followed by various tests and doctor visits. Insurance premiums plus co-pays meant I spent over $10k out of pocket. Young, fit and employed is the way to keep health costs down.

kodokan

Alternatively, you may have a high deductible health insurance plan as ChocolateBabz mentioned above, where you pay all costs out of pocket up to a certain excess. Mine, for example, is $2.6k, so I pay the first $2.6k of any medical costs in any calendar year. My daughter broke her ankle this year, and the bills for consults, various walking aids, and physio have totaled around $2k. I've paid all this - the insurance is really only there for catastrophes.

On the plus side our health insurance has just gone non-contributory for the premiums - but this is REALLY unusual for an employer to do - and the employer also bungs $1k into our HSA. So if we don't get sick or break anything, we actually make bank on the health cover!

Pulaski

About the same as our insurance - $3k individual deductible, $8k family deductible, but coverage is 100% after the deductibles have been met. ..... The premiums are peanuts though!

Jerseygirl

Our deductible is $500...no co-pay. Don't know how much we pay monthly.

donna1167

I do. I have excellent insurance. I don't pay premiums for my husband or myself. I have $100 deductible, my co-pays are on $10 whether it's for a GP or a specialist and my co-pay for ER is $75. I'm covered 100% too. I'm loathe to leave the job I'm in because of the benefits to be honest. It's like having the NHS all over again...lol.

Tanja87

Wow! It's interesting how different the insurance covers are for health care over there. From what I gather my husband's work offer really good health insurance so that should be ok for us...
We'll be flying out in 5 weeks so hopefully will get a chance to gather some more info. But looks like we have more time to research than I initially thought anyway - I thought if we go it'd be next year, hubby says it's more likely gonna be at least another 2 years
What should we expect being over there end of August/beginning of September? Will it be a bit cooler by then? I gather it's about 38*C at the moment!! I believe we will also be there for labour day so there should be parades and that, right? I think I mentioned that before but I'm a bit weary being pretty much on my own with the kids for the first week while hubby is working... Any recommendations for what I could do all day with a 1 and a 3 year old? Good places to eat? We will be staying in the Grapevine area but we're renting a car so we're able to go exploring

Wintersong

Grapevine sounds like it has a lot of fun over the summer! SummerBlast | Summer in Grapevine TX

Train robberies should be a blast - Great Train Robberies - Grapevine,Texas Events

Pulaski

Insurance is a whole separate topic of discussion, but what is "really good health insurance" might not be what you expect. I have noticed among my colleagues that there has been a realisation in recent years that "high deductible insurance" makes a lot of sensense if you have low or moderate health insurance needs. If you have high deductible insurance you are allowed to have a Health Savings Account, which you can fund pre-tax, to pay your share of healthcare costs.

In fact two colleagues of mine (unknown to each other) who have three and four children came to the conclusion that high deductible insurance was right for their families and one confirmed that it was working well for them even after one of his sons broke his arm in the first six months of being on high deductible insurance.

rbackhouse

I know of some companies that are moving over to only offering High Deductible HSA based plans. My last company (extremely large tech company) and the one I'm with now (extremely large tech and computer manufacturer) both push very hard for employees to go with an HSA backed plan. They both offered an incentive via funding an amount for the HSA account. This is the last year that I have any other option than to pick the HSA based plan. Everyone was given a good incentive to change to this plan before the others go away so it made sense to make the jump now.

donna1167

With any plan you can have an FSA account which is the same as HSA except you have to use up all your funds by the end of the year, although I believe they're now allowing a $500 carry over amount. Both my husband and I have FSA accounts and I think they're invaluable. The only problem with them is you have to have a rough idea of how much you're going to spend each year.

Pulaski

For that reason I don't feel the benefits of an FSA are anywhere near as good as an HSA. ..... We fund our HSAs to the maximum every year and are now sitting on massive accumulated balances that will continue to grow tax-free until we need them for healthcare expenses.

Once we reach retirement age we can withdraw funds for any reason, but we expect to continue to hold them for healthcare expenses.

kodokan

Hubby's previous megacorp only offers a HSA-based plan; the other option was withdrawn in 2012. They did a bung into the HSA accounts for a couple of years, but that went away once everyone had moved over and stopped moaning.

His current company has traditional and HD options, but they're sweetening the pot - heavily! - by saying that from 2017, the HD plan is free for employees while the regular one will continue to be several hundred dollars a month. I'm expecting the traditional plan to disappear for 2018.

It's a very decent HD plan, as it's very wide network PPO and the deductible is only $2.6k for both individual and family. At present, we also get a $1k boost for the HSA, but I'm guessing that will stop next year, since the insurance itself will be free.

cautiousjon

My employer offers a Limited Use FSA, which can be used for vision and dental at any time, and then for health once your HSA runs out. My employer funded everyone's FSAs for this year (up to the employee's specific election) on January 1. However, the company only claws back 1/26th of that amount every paycheck. If you were to fund it up to, say, $3000, but leave half way through the year, the company will have given you $3000 but only got $1500 back. There is no clawback provision, so the company has to simply forgive the remaining balance, which means that you effectively got $1500 for free.

I am pretty sure that this is something written into the IRS rules, and not something that any company does for the sheer benefit of it's employees though.

Very nice! I, too, work for a "megacorp" employer that offers health insurance with zero premiums*. We used to have an incredible cadillac-style health plan ($10 copays, etc) for 19 years before it went away at the end of last year (zero premiums on that too!), and now we have a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP).

This year, the company funded people's HSAs with some "transitional seed money" ($800 single, $2K something for folks with dependents), and will offer a smaller amount of transitional seed money next year, and then likely none after that. However, it also introduced a yearly "wellness incentive" at the start of this year, whereby if you agree to take a medical exam and fill in a comprehensive health questionnaire (at the expense of the company), the company will give a further $700 to you (and your spouse if you have one and s/he takes part too).

Our deductibles are about $2.5K for single, and $4.5K for families, with a max. out of pocket balance (deductible + co-insurance) of about $4K for single, and $6.5K for families.

* There is a charge of $2.6K levied to any employee who puts his/her spouse on the company's health insurance as primary, when the spouse has alternative health insurance provided by the spouse's own employer.