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read page out loud: %{artist} - %{title} [%{album}], (%{year}) (%{time})   click Play   Seek to %{time1} of %{time2} (%{percent}%)   ---   0:00   Andrea Skaggs, MD - Fayette Family Medicine Andrea Skaggs, MD - Fayette Family Medicine

Mini-Medical Plans

EMPLOYERS ARE INCREASINGLY TURNING TO “MINI-MEDICAL” OR “LIMITED-BENEFIT” HEALTH PLANS, WHICH OFFER LOW PREMIUMS BUT DO NOT COVER MAJOR MEDICAL EXPENSES.

Available as group plans or individual policies, they typically cover four to 10 doctor visits a year, a certain amount of prescription drugs and some lab work or other tests, while premiums can cost as little as $40 a month—far less than the $148 average for a major-medical plan bought on the market or the $335 average cost of someone on a company health plan, reported the Wall Street Journal. Insurers estimate that nearly one million people have mini-medical plans, and that business is growing 20 percent a year, the Journal added, noting that mini-medical plans have been around since the ’80s, and until recently were sold mostly to temp- agency, fast-food and chain-store workers, but are becoming more commonplace as employers cut back on full benefits, or turn more to part-time and contract workers.

—Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2006

A high deductible plan paired with a tax-deferred Health Savings Account is a much better use of your health care dollars. If you have one physical a year (most cost about $100 plus lab work) and 4 acute problems per year (about $55 each) you would end up paying me about $320 total for the year. If you get a “mini plan” at the lowest premium of $40 per month, that adds up to $480 per year, and you still don’t have coverage for major expenses.

The idea of “insurance” is to share risk for unpredictable losses. When you start asking someone else to manage payments for you for predictable costs, that’s a shopping service. If you can afford to pay someone to pay your bills for you (using your money), you are probably rich enough to buy an expensive health plan. If you are like me, you have to clean your own house and pay your own bills.

You should have insurance: Life insurance to replace lost income if you die while you still have dependents, homeowners to protect you from major losses like fires (not to pay for having the RotoRooter guy in, you know what that would do to your premiums), auto insurance to help replace your car if it is wrecked or stolen and to protect you from liability if you harm someone else with your car. Health insurance that will cover unpredictable expenses you could not afford to pay yourself. If you are in a serious accident, or have cancer or some other life-threatening illness, an insurance plan that picks up when your savings run out would be a real blessing. An even greater blessing would be to have those premiums turn out to be wasted because you never need to make a claim.

If you have questions about paying for health care costs, please don’t hesitate to ask. The chaotic “non-system” of health care in this country leaves most people befuddled. Playing on fear and lack of information, insurance companies have convinced us that we must give them not only lots of money, but all control of our health care decisions as well. This has worked nicely for the insurance executives: as just one example, William McGuire, the CEO of United Health Care, makes $129 million per year. Yes you heard me correctly: $129,000,000.00. It has not worked out so well for the rest of us: the average family of four pays $11,000 per year in premiums, but only consumes about $2000 worth of care.

Health care costs are not THAT hard to understand. If you are willing to plan ahead, you can manage all but the most catastrophic situations yourself at much lower cost than what you would have to pay a “shopping service” to do it for you. And I will give you a price break to rival what is “allowed” by most insurance plans; all you have to do is ask.

Be the

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—gandhi