Implants on budget health insurance?

I wonder if this is the one advertised as "what can you get for 5 bucks? a burger? pack of cigarettes? how about HEALTH INSURANCE! call now!"

Its playing in northern virginia, always cracks me up.

@Xerloq:

Apparently, it's the new Dolly Parton line...

@Xerloq: RTFA? Implants are pretty common for people who get breast cancer, and don't want to be depressed by their complete lack of breasts thereafter.

So is this like the health insurance Wal Mart offers but their employees mostly can not afford?

One plan for instance, has a max of 30 hospital days at a max of $750

Um, we like to call that our "Accelerated Healing through Positive Motivation" option.

@Xerloq: it likely refers to anything implanted. artificial hips, knee caps, anything and everything put into the body. i doubt it covers breast implants.

@fjordtjie: Correct. I think breast reconstruction is the only case that they cover breast implants. I also know that more and more insurance companies are fighting to get breast reduction surgery removed entirely from their roster of covered services.

@rpm773: What separates us from other hospitals is that other hospitals are hospitals...

@AcceptingTheAward_GitEmSteveDave: And then they can say, "Look, we offer health care to all of our employees!" And the business magazines will gush forward with praise.

I recently needed a new insurance plan and considered Assurant Health until I did some snooping online for consumer reviews. Sure enough, about 99% of the reviews were flat-out awful, with most reviewers claiming AS denied just about everything under the sun.

I seriously hate healthcare in America.

@rpm773: A one-day stay at the hospital is usually at least $1,000 (not including the separate charges from doctors and labs).

Sounds like you're welcome to give them your premium payments for the privilege of letting them tell you you have insurance, but that doesn't mean they'll pay for your medical treatment.

@AcceptingTheAward_GitEmSteveDave:

Yes...because if Wal-Mart didn't put shock collar invisible fences on townsfolk and force them to work there, those individuals would be working in a corner office with full health, vision, and dental...

I was recently looking into personal health insurance plans, but gave up in disgust when I saw that one plan covered fertility treatments but not birth control pills. I have no words for that....

So...you're telling me that using Oxiclean to clean arterial plaque is some sort of self-serving BS?

42 grand for implants? that's 21 grand a pop?

Aren't they basically bags full of salt?

/I'm in the wrong business

Anyone have some suggestions? I have opened my own business but working the old job as well. Oldie will have to go shortly along with my insurance...

@csdiego: Here in MA I'd love a plan like that. The state's idea of "universal health care" is to require everyone to get it. They don't care where, and they don't help you with it. If you don't get it, you get charged a ton on your taxes.

I'd welcome a $5 plan just to say I have health insurance, but they don't offer those here.

And this people is why we need health care reform!

Cue the Republicans saying that having Canadian-style single-payer health insurance will cause bodies in the streets because of no one getting health care....

Funny, but I've never seen that on my visits to Vancouver, BC...

@cordeliapotter: Oh there are group plans that do that too. Any Catholic health services sponsored plan will pay for you to be knocked up by any scientific means necessary. Preventing pregnancy no way you harlot, get thee self to a nunnery!

I seriously hate the years we were forced to use a Catholic run health plan because it was the only employer based option we had. It sucked. They denied everything, forced us to file claims repeatedly and the terms you never get to see in writing meant they covered very little. The no birth control yet totally covered fertility was just the little jab to ice the cake. No contraception, no mental health coverage but fully covered fertility treatments, WTF.

@GuinevereRucker: Exactly! forcing people to get health insurance is not the answer. Tightly regulating insurance companies would be a step in the right direction.

We looked at a private health plan from a supposed reliable insurer. $3000 a month and a $5000 deductible, minimal coverage, no pharmacy benefit. That was before they screened you for existing health problems and made you get a physical.

@cordeliapotter: It seems to me that the price of birth control pills indicates that they are something more suitable to being paid for out of pocket rather than being the subject of an insurance claim.

Maybe part of the problem with "insurance" is that people expect it to cover everyday costs, not just potentially catastrophic ones.

@GuinevereRucker: So you're taxed if you can't afford to pay for sickcare? That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.

In regards to universal healthcare, most Republicans I know just spew the same fear-mongering they hear from such blowhards as Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. It's as if they have no mind of their own - they're like sheep. Having experience with both forms of health care, I can confidently say that our way is definitely not the way to go, but it is the most lucrative, which is all that matters. It's why most insurance plans don't cover preventative health, because (as Chris Rock once said) they want to get you on the comeback.

@GuinevereRucker:

Why, that's taxation without representation! Let's dump some tea in their harbor!

Seriously, that sucks eggs. How the hell do they get away with that?

@HRHKingFridayXX: Cinergy Health... cracks me up too :)

@lordargent:

I hope those implants are the surgical kind, like a stent or something.

@outoftheblew: I stayed overnight in the hospital because I was septic with a kidney infection... cost $4,000 to lay in a bed hooked up to an IV, watch TV and eat crappy food.

@varro: I've never seen that either in my quarter-century of living in Vancouver, BC.

I've always had great experiences with the health care system here. One example: about ten years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating abdominal pain. Got a ride to the hospital at 4am, got a bed within half an hour, surgery within 3 or 4 hours, and was home the next morning.

The best part though was not having the stress of worrying about how I was going to pay for it. It cost me nothing out of pocket of course.

@Yossarian: It seems to me that you have not paid for birth control out of pocket. Birth control pills are not all equal. Considering the number of everyday prescriptions that are paid through insurance, why should birth control be any different.

I have seen insurance that's cheap because it doesn't give much coverage and has a huge deductable. This type of insurance is worthless your better off putting that money in a high yield savings account and being "self insured." On the other hand I have seen insurance that is essentially oh shit health insurance where you get a doctors visit covered and some other minor things with a prescript discount and then you have to eat up a 10k deductible, but after that you have decent coverage. This type of insurance isn't bad. Especially if your insurance has a pay scale with the hospital and doctor.

@ComcastRedwoodFlyer: If Wal-Mart didn't bleed local governments for tax abatements, free land and all sorts of other subsidies, lots of those people would still be shopping at local stores or smaller regional chains. You know, the ones that provide service and occasionally sell a product made in the USA. They wouldn't be any more likely to afford their healthcare, though.

@varro: The bodies Republicans "see" in the street in Vancouver are just (temporary) victims of BC Bud... another hot-button issue for them, I'm sure.

@Yossarian: What does the price have to do with it? Birth control pills are pretty expensive (they can cost up to $70-$80 a month). They also prevent pregnancy and birth, which all would cost the insurers much more than birth control does. It's reasonable to cover them as preventative medicine, which is what they are. If you don't want insurance to cover preventative medicine, then it shouldn't cover any number of other things like annual physical exams, screening tests, etc. In the long run it's probably not a good thing to not have insurance cover prevention because it means that more expensive health problems will crop up down the line when people inevitably ignore the preventative care because it costs too much money. (Of course, the insurers hope that by that time the patient will be on another insurer or on Medicare, and thus not their problem. But we should be trying to save money globally, not just for individual insurers.)

@GuinevereRucker: I have state subsidized health insurance in Massachusetts. It's called Commonwealth Care and it is for people whose employers do not offer insurance and can't afford private care. I pay about $40 a month and I have excellent coverage. It's actually pretty easy to get if you make under $30,000 a year (which I do, by a long shot).

@lordargent: There is no reason to assume that it's breast implants.

Yep, where I work they added an "affordable", catastrophic plan and were trying to push it. It has lowere premiums but doesn't cover much so you would end up paying more. At least our HR people care enough about the employees to try and steer them away from that one.

For the sake of comparison, I live in Vancouver, Canada. I and my spouse have medical and dental coverage through my employer for about $100/month. This includes doctor, hospital, specialists, all prescriptions (including birth control), all dental work at 100%, plus some perks. I can add kids (when we have them) for around another $50/mo/each.

Of course, my taxes are higher too. In Canada health care is funded almost completely by the provinces. Last year BC spent 40% of its revenue on health care. The share of that for a middle class double income household making say $100k is $1800/year.

So full health care coverage for a middle-class family of four here runs about $350-400/month, with no paperwork or worries about being denied coverage.

I'm not trying to brag, just trying to spread the word about why the US should follow our (and the rest of the world's) lead.

I ran into this back when I temped. My agency very proudly told me that they offered health insurance. I looked at it and came to the conclusion that I was going to be spending about $100 a month--a bargain!--for coverage that not only wouldn't cover anything preventative or minor (no prescriptions, no office visits) but also was going to cut off after about $20,000 in total bills. As I recall, that wasn't even yearly, it was total, forever.

So, I said, let me get this straight. Why would I pay $100 a month for insurance that leaves me stranded if I get a sinus infection *and* if I get cancer?

No answer for that.

@sonneillon: Actually, that type of insurance can be bad depending on what type of health situation you have. If you have a chronic disease high-deductible insurance is terrible because it's not like you can just forgo treatment to save money. For those people, it's the same as just adding $10K/year to their healthcare costs.

Moreover, once you start analyzing the healthcare crisis overall, you realize that high-deductible insurance is really not the answer to our problems. These chronic disease patients are the source of most healthcare spending, and for them a high-deductible plan does nothing to discourage overuse of resources. It might discourage overuse of resources by people who aren't chronically ill, but those people aren't really the problem anyway with healthcare costs. And worst of all, high-deductible plans can discourage both healthy and unhealthy people from getting NECESSARY health care, or even make it financially impossible. "Consumer-driven healthcare", the insurance lobby's newest euphemism for shifting costs onto sick individuals, is a bad idea because individuals are inherently not good at deciding what healthcare they really need and don't need. Experts, like the doctors we pay to do this, should make those decisions, not untrained individuals who are worried about coming up with money to meet their deductible. If you doubt me that individuals aren't good at making healthcare decisions, look at the popularity of "alternative health" (essentially a scam, but one that sadly often substitutes for more expensive real medicine for financial reasons) and at the people who oppose vaccinations for totally irrational reasons (when the risks vs. benefits of vaccines are clear in people who don't have risk factors for negative reactions).

@cecilpl:

You had me at "no paperwork and being denied coverage."

That's the one thing I miss about the military - being fully insured and not having to worry about anything.

Max of $750. HIGH-larious.

My last visit was for the flu. I received one [1] IV bag to rehydrate me and then I was kicked out. Period.

Cost: $1600.

[Fyi: Billy Mays can suck on my empty IV bag]

@HRHKingFridayXX: Oh, yes, my husband's sick of my commentary on that ad. "I'm not sure health insurance is a good place for frugality!" "What's $5 a day get you, a bullet to the brain when you break a leg? Is this the horse plan?"

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

@t-r0y: This quote flies in the face of empirical reality.

I have healthcare through my work, which I pay $1200 a year for that DOESN'T go toward my deductible which is another $1500. I don't think I want to know how much my company is paying on top of that.