5 ms·

Premiums for family health insurance at work jump to nearly $24,000

22 points by myroon5 3y ago

tschwimmer 3y ago
Headline is misleading as the employee share of this is $6,575 for a family or $1400 for a single. Rest is borne by employer but is generally a tax writeoff for them.
- salad-tycoon 3y ago
  I believe it argues that it affects employees in pay cuts and rising prices at stores. It doesn’t argue it strongly but is briefly mentioned.
FireBeyond 3y ago
How did CNN ignore the elephant in the room? You pay all this money, and you're facing an average $7,500 per family deductible on top of all this. Healthcare, or rather, the healthcare system in America (Land of the Middleman) is truly and utterly fucked, excuse my language.
- exclusiv 3y ago
  On the other hand, americans are fat as hell lol. (I am american) Obviously that is a complicated issue, but what's the cost look like for everyone if 40% of Americans weren't so fat?
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Me too, definitely can stand to lose a few pounds. But I've also worked a good portion of my career in healthcare IT (claims benefit management, EHR), as well as a paramedic, seeing first hand the suboptimal care in ERs, hospitals, and SNFs (skilled nursing facilities). I have many physician and other HCP friends. SNFs regularly ship "annoying" residents to ERs because the staff deem them to be too high maintenance, resulting in a $2,000 bill each way for the ambulance, $3,000+ for the ER... and may do this multiple times a week. I also grew up in Australia, and while that healthcare system certainly wasn't perfect, we spend far more here for similar outcomes. My other passionate cause is end of life care - roughly, we spend more in the last year of someone's life on medical care keeping them alive, sometimes with horrendous quality of life (and often for family's benefit, not the patient) than we do in the previous ten years of their life, and we spend more in that ten years than we spend on the rest of their life. Forget "death panels", the more we allow death with dignity, or just better counseling for families that it's okay to let someone go, the better.
  - acdha 3y ago
    It’s not that simple: Americans aren’t unusually fat because everyone set out to get that way, but because we have unhealthy lifestyles (sedentary driving is the primary travel mode, we live in car-centric exercise-discouraging housing, our jobs tend to be sedentary but high-stress / long hours, etc.) and heavily subsidize low-quality food, and we price healthcare so much higher than the rest of the world that many people are discouraged from preventative treatment. If you fix any combination of those, obesity rates will go down but you’d have to do some care analysis to say how much of the healthcare expenditure reductions were due to lifestyle improvements rather than weight loss.
  - Accujack 3y ago
    ...because the FDA has stopped (been underfunded and politically interfered with) protecting our food supply from overuse of fillers, sugar, and other less healthy ingredients. Cheap packaged food is very bad for you, and not everyone has the ability to purchase fresh stuff and cook it.
- BadCookie 3y ago
  Also, in my area, you get to wait 2 months to see your primary care doctor even if you are an established patient. You will most likely either be recovered or dead by the time your appointment arrives (unless you have a chronic illness).
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Was in a notable car accident, not the worst, but definitely not the best. Was advised to start PT immediately on discharge from hospital. Every PT within 30 miles of me had a 3-6 month wait, when they were accepting new clients whatsoever.
    - BadCookie 3y ago
      I am very sorry (but, unfortunately, not surprised) to hear that. I hope that you’re doing okay. It seems we are paying more than ever for less-than-ever access to medical care.
  - Saris 3y ago
    Yeah I end up going to urgent care for just about everything, because my doctor is months out.
salad-tycoon 3y ago
I appreciated how forced the presentation of abortion was in this article. As if that is the most critical issue that families face? “Oh no, workers will be getting paycuts to fund their insurance and then they won’t be covered for abortions!” What about food and shelter and school supplies and gas and and and… as a person with a “large” (modern times) family I can tell you, the cost of our abortions haven’t increased but everything else is through the roof. Recently cleaning out some things and found a supermarket flyer from 2014-2017, and let me tell you. Wow. Double, triple prices on a lot of things. And it seems like to me most of the rising of the cost have been in the last 2-3 years. We do fine in the clearance meat and organic aisle since people around here don’t like fresh and healthy food, we are fortunate, but CNN can stuff it with their virtue signaling.

22 points by myroon5 3y ago

Headline is misleading as the employee share of this is $6,575 for a family or $1400 for a single. Rest is borne by employer but is generally a tax writeoff for them.

salad-tycoon 3y ago
I believe it argues that it affects employees in pay cuts and rising prices at stores. It doesn’t argue it strongly but is briefly mentioned.

FireBeyond 3y ago

How did CNN ignore the elephant in the room? You pay all this money, and you're facing an average $7,500 per family deductible on top of all this. Healthcare, or rather, the healthcare system in America (Land of the Middleman) is truly and utterly fucked, excuse my language.

exclusiv 3y ago
On the other hand, americans are fat as hell lol. (I am american) Obviously that is a complicated issue, but what's the cost look like for everyone if 40% of Americans weren't so fat?
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Me too, definitely can stand to lose a few pounds. But I've also worked a good portion of my career in healthcare IT (claims benefit management, EHR), as well as a paramedic, seeing first hand the suboptimal care in ERs, hospitals, and SNFs (skilled nursing facilities). I have many physician and other HCP friends. SNFs regularly ship "annoying" residents to ERs because the staff deem them to be too high maintenance, resulting in a $2,000 bill each way for the ambulance, $3,000+ for the ER... and may do this multiple times a week. I also grew up in Australia, and while that healthcare system certainly wasn't perfect, we spend far more here for similar outcomes. My other passionate cause is end of life care - roughly, we spend more in the last year of someone's life on medical care keeping them alive, sometimes with horrendous quality of life (and often for family's benefit, not the patient) than we do in the previous ten years of their life, and we spend more in that ten years than we spend on the rest of their life. Forget "death panels", the more we allow death with dignity, or just better counseling for families that it's okay to let someone go, the better.
- acdha 3y ago
  It’s not that simple: Americans aren’t unusually fat because everyone set out to get that way, but because we have unhealthy lifestyles (sedentary driving is the primary travel mode, we live in car-centric exercise-discouraging housing, our jobs tend to be sedentary but high-stress / long hours, etc.) and heavily subsidize low-quality food, and we price healthcare so much higher than the rest of the world that many people are discouraged from preventative treatment. If you fix any combination of those, obesity rates will go down but you’d have to do some care analysis to say how much of the healthcare expenditure reductions were due to lifestyle improvements rather than weight loss.
- Accujack 3y ago
  ...because the FDA has stopped (been underfunded and politically interfered with) protecting our food supply from overuse of fillers, sugar, and other less healthy ingredients. Cheap packaged food is very bad for you, and not everyone has the ability to purchase fresh stuff and cook it.
BadCookie 3y ago
Also, in my area, you get to wait 2 months to see your primary care doctor even if you are an established patient. You will most likely either be recovered or dead by the time your appointment arrives (unless you have a chronic illness).
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Was in a notable car accident, not the worst, but definitely not the best. Was advised to start PT immediately on discharge from hospital. Every PT within 30 miles of me had a 3-6 month wait, when they were accepting new clients whatsoever.
  - BadCookie 3y ago
    I am very sorry (but, unfortunately, not surprised) to hear that. I hope that you’re doing okay. It seems we are paying more than ever for less-than-ever access to medical care.
- Saris 3y ago
  Yeah I end up going to urgent care for just about everything, because my doctor is months out.

salad-tycoon 3y ago

I appreciated how forced the presentation of abortion was in this article. As if that is the most critical issue that families face? “Oh no, workers will be getting paycuts to fund their insurance and then they won’t be covered for abortions!” What about food and shelter and school supplies and gas and and and… as a person with a “large” (modern times) family I can tell you, the cost of our abortions haven’t increased but everything else is through the roof. Recently cleaning out some things and found a supermarket flyer from 2014-2017, and let me tell you. Wow. Double, triple prices on a lot of things. And it seems like to me most of the rising of the cost have been in the last 2-3 years. We do fine in the clearance meat and organic aisle since people around here don’t like fresh and healthy food, we are fortunate, but CNN can stuff it with their virtue signaling.