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It’s not just the money. Losing health insurance is pretty bad, especially if there are others on one’s insurance.
by Apocryphon 4y ago
It’s not just the money. Losing health insurance is pretty bad, especially if there are others on one’s insurance.
- snowpid 4y ago[flagged]
- aaomidi 4y agoYou’re on an American website, and talking with people who are statistically likely to be American. So yes.
- snowpid 4y agoSo I thought Hackernews is an international website where everybody assume we are spread across the globe. Looks like some people are very narrow minded.
- ROTMetro 4y agoI'd argue it's the low empathy, low effort 'America problem' comment spawning responses worthy of it versus narrow mindedness.
- snowpid 4y agoand I am annoied that people assume American problem = everywhere problem. One could write "in America people could lose their health insurance" . Also low effort.
- darth_avocado 4y ago> You’re on an American website Is there a country ownership when it comes to websites if people all over the world use it? Only about 36% of the traffic comes from within US, so you’re not wrong in the statistical significance, but you also need to be congnizant of the global participation on this site. https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.ycombinator.com/#traffic https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.ycombinator.com/#tra...
- dang 4y agoYou shouldn't assume this. Last I checked, HN was about 50% in the US, but then a lot of HN users in the US aren't necessarily American, and there are also Americans abroad.
- ericd 4y agoIt stings a little, but is ultimately not that bad if you have a very healthy emergency fund. It’s generally much cheaper than housing.
- Apocryphon 4y agoHow much would it be?
- luckylion 4y agoSo it is about the money, then? Surely, insurance companies don't object to you paying them directly.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Surely, insurance companies don't object to you paying them directly Adverse selection means an individual can’t get the same insurance a big organization buying for a large group can; ACA exchanges may (state markets vary a lot) mitigate that somewhat, but they don't fully make up for it. Part of this is orice for benefits, but the same benefit packages may not be available to you at any price (adverse selection means creates a kind of feedback loop where for certain things, there is no price where offering an option isn't a losing deal for the offeror, because the only people who would take it would be the ones for whom it would be a net loss for the seller to provide it.) COBRA, though, allows you to keep your bigco insurance when you lose your job, as long as you take over both sides of the payment, for up to 18 months. So, in that sense, it is about the money.
- snowpid 4y agoThe reason why I said, it is a mainly American problem: SAP is a German company. We can assume many people losing their job wont lose their health insurances because they live in Germany.
- Apocryphon 4y agoAnd this is all in the context of layoff sprees happening at mostly U.S. based tech multinationals. It’s not as if Booking.com has been doing layoffs- though it seems like they already did that a year ago. And certainly Spotify also laid people off.
- snowpid 4y agothe context might be different for people in different countries. SAP is more important for me than lets say Meta.
- Apocryphon 4y agoYes, but it would seem not to the HN audience, otherwise threads like this wouldn’t have 600+ replies because the mostly North American audience is unfamiliar with SAP. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32776276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32776276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22244750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22244750
- snowpid 4y agoagain, then Americans wouldnt care about SAP lay offs which should be a bigger thing in Germany. Please accept different perspectives.
- Apocryphon 4y agoYes, then please accept the different perspective of people concerned about losing their health insurance.
- vkou 4y agoEver since Obamacare banned discrimination for pre-existing conditions, health insurance is entirely a function of money. If you're taking home significantly more money, you can set a small fraction of it aside to cover an employer insurance gap. The problem for programmers is not cost of insurance, the problem is weird long-tail shit like insurance denying treatments you need, or wildly over-billing you.
- dboreham 4y ago"small fraction" is optimistic imho. Health insurance costs me more than my home mortgage payment (and it's crappy insurance that pays almost nothing). In my experience it isn't possible to reproduce the "BigCo health insurance" experience yourself, regardless of expense, unless you allow buying your own hospital.
- vkou 4y agoYour home must either be a cardboard box, in the middle of nowhere, or you bought it two decades ago. Its value is not what it pays for, it's value is capping out-of-pocket maximums in the worst-case. (Any serious medical situation will quickly run you up to them.) Also, have you ever looked at the 'Employer pays' line item on the insurance section of a bigco paystub? Mine is more than my rent. (Maybe I should move to a bigger apartment.) I understand that there's a huge sticker shock to having to pay your + an employer's portion of insurance, but it's still a function of money, and working for a bigco that does 7% layoffs every 8 years is a really good way to earn a lot of money. And it's not like there are any 'play it safe' places in a recession. You can't predict the future, and small companies go belly-up, and do layoffs just as much as big ones.
- ROTMetro 4y agoWhy are you making assumptions about OPs numbers? Instead let's talk the numbers you are trying to minimize. Cobra averages $600 per person per month. That is $2400 per month for a family of four. I agree when I was self employed my largest cost was always health insurance, but for someone who has never been self employed a new $2400 a month bill on top of being fired can be quite a shock and add a ton of addition stress and pressure.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoCOBRA, or a state-equivalent, is available for nearly all US employees for 18 months after a layoff. Yes, it's expensive, but not outrageously so - I've been on COBRA a few times, and the expense is just because you're paying for the piece the company used to. Point being it's still just money at the end, and saving up for a rainy day fund should also include COBRA payments in the calculation of how long the fund will last.
- ROTMetro 4y agoCobra is on average $600 per person per month. For a family of 4, that's $2400 per month. For something for people who are specifically unemployed that seems outrageously expensive.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoAdding people to the plan is not linear, i.e. there are individual plans, spousal plans and family plans (I'm sure they probably exist somewhere but I've never seen a plan that charges more per kid on a family plan). But yes, family plans are expensive (I've seen them average about $1500 a month for COBRA family plans), but that just gets to the point about saving enough in a rainy day fund to include healthcare costs.
- throwaway5959 4y agoIn the US, at least in decently managed states, you can transform money into subsidized health insurance. (Covered CA for instance)