I was just lumping them in with smokers and assuming they are in the same category. My quick google search seems to back that up, although I’m not going to read too much about it. I did write a pretty fantastic paper last year about the costs of health insurance for the “healthy” vs people that smoke and don’t really take care of themselves. My conclusion was we need to get these damn kids smoking again, lol. I’m working towards a bachelors in healthcare administration so I chose this as a paper topic.
If you guys want to really shit a brick, I could quote you some of the policies I used to sell when I was with GHI. It was to the point where a family policy in the NYC region-the 5 boroughs plus Suffolk/Rockland/Westchester counties, was well above a mortgage payment. “Yes sir, you can either make a monthly payment on a GT3RS or have an AWESOME intangible item like health insurance.”
no, because part of your compensation for working at your job is employer subsidized health insurance. Much like cell phones, it’s expensive as hell when not subsidized. If your employer were to pay you more money in leu of health insurance subsidization, then there could be reason to look elsewhere. No employer I’ve ever heard of does that though.
A group rate will always be less then if you were to get insurance on an individual basis. Also, there are more options to you through group coverage, co-pays, deductibles, co insurance, etc. The reason why individual policies are more expensive is that in a group setting, the risk gets spread over the whole group. On an individual basis you are the risk. Also, the experience on individual policies is much greater then a group policy
The other offices though out the US I work for are not paying anywhere near what I’m paying here in WNY for coverage. I love the job and the pay/ raises are amazing however I’ve considered transferring to another agency or district in lieu of my health insurance costs. Economically this area is so depressing the more and more I compare cost of living to other states, it could be worse I suppose. The thing that really gets me is everyone in our office complains about the health insurance but no one does anything about it, then again what can you do??
For whatever reason health insurance prices blow in NYS
NYS is a welfare state
It’s funny when people say things like, “for whatever reason”, like it was some magic fucking elf that made insurance so much more expensive in NY than other states. As is the case with most problems in NY, this one boils down to Democrats and their bad ideas.
Back in the early 1990s, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo pushed reforms aimed at fixing the state’s health-care system. Those reforms were supposed to reduce the ranks of the uninsured as well as prevent insurance companies from unfairly charging people with health problems more than others or dropping sick people from the insurance rolls. They were also supposed to spark greater insurance competition.
If that sounds like reforms being proposed in Washington today, it’s not a coincidence. One of the biggest things Mr. Cuomo did was to impose government mandates called community rating (CR) and guaranteed issue (GI). The former prevents insurers from charging people more based on their health or age, and the latter forbids denying coverage to anyone who wants to buy it. These two mandates are now a central part of reforms advancing in Congress. In New York, enacting them has been a mistake.
Full article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703746604574461482860007734.html
I was hoping it was a magic elf 
My current job is going from $184 a pay period (every 2 weeks) for the wife and I to $207. Luckily I scored a new job that’s less than half that but it’s sure that health insurance rates are getting ridiculous and seem to be covering less and less.
Health insurance costs in NYS are high because it is community rated. Meaning that if I’m a healthy spandex wearing bike riding faggot who takes care of my health, I cost as much to insure as a person born with a genitic heart murmor/defect. Community rated means that staticians determine how likely you are to contract such and such disease based on where you live. It is not based on your lifestyle like life insurance is. Obviously the rates in NYC are higher then in Buffalo. This is for small group coverage-groups of 2-50. When you get into the groups of 50+, you are in large employer group policies where they are experience rated. Rates are derived by looking at a sampling of the groups medical history. I never sold large group coverage so that’s where my knowledge of 50+ groups ends.
I can see where they were going with the community rating idea-the guy born with a heart defect didn’t ask for that. Like anything, it has it’s plus and minuses. Also, because they have to make a policy available to the consumer, don’t think they are going to do something like price it affordably. You want an individual direct pay PPO? Sure, it’s $600+ a month and it doesn’t cover office visits.
In my 5 years with GHI, I saw a policy for a sole proprieter go from mid $200’s a month for good coverage, to $700+. We stopped offering the PPO plans with $5 office co pays as they just became unaffordable. We had a meeting as we had to get from legal a scripted response to the question of “why are my rates always going up?” It was some corporate bullshit that “due to the rising costs of medical procedures…”. I tried to read the script to a doctors office that had one of our plans in place for his office staff. She found it comical how the “rising costs of medical procedure” was blamed when the fee schedule, what they payed to the providers, looked like something out of the 50’s.
A few of my road riding spandex wearing biking faggot teamates are dentists and they absolutely laughed at our fee schedule. I think a crown payed something like $75 to the provider. The one guy said he would be out of business if he accepted our dental insurance.
And the shitty part-it’s only going to get worse. And it’s not only going to get worse before it gets better, it’s only going to get worse. It’s way too big to change, there’s too many hands in on this, and too many CEO’s and cock slobbing managers making $xxx,xxx for it to change.
$22 every 2 weeks? If your coverage goes up that much every year, you’re doing well.
Also, you have to look at the coverage levels. Just looking at the monthly cost doesn’t tell you the whole picture.
Yeah, the rise wasn’t that bad but the coverage is pretty shitty. I had an EKG a month back and my insurance covered $6.62 of the $95 it cost…
The new coverage isn’t only cheaper but a ton better…
My plan has lower rates for this year. The plan did change a bit; no more co-pay and it is a 20% co-insurance after the deductible…
Single was $292.26 - 2013 will be $274.24
Family was $823.08 - 2013 will be $704.35
(I didn’t want to post this until I had an employee meeting to let my employees know before NYSPEED. :))
Edit: deductible is $1500/$3000 with $4000/$8000 max out of pocket. I pay half of the deductible for my employees.
I work for BCBS, our rates did not go up but our copays/deductibles changed between our two plans (we have the traditional copay driven plan which cost me 118 a month for family and the HDHP plan which costs zero and they give you 60% of the deductible roughly)
One major change for us this year though, they entered into a partnership with Kaleida (only valid for Kaleida and BCBS salary employee’s) which they formed a special network. It has pissed a lot of people off with less choices.
Over the past few years it has definately become more “user pay”. In other words, the people using it pay more which makes sense to me. It is sort of like young men paying more for auto insurance. You crash, you pay. 
Although with that you pay more no matter what even if you have never crashed. lol
One of the big industry trends has been the drive towards the the self funded/administrative services only model.
Actually health insurance got screwed on being able to deny people from pre exisiting and life time limits and other bs outside of the slight increase in cost it helps most people