OOIDA Health Insurance

Do you expect your car insurance to pay for oil changes, tune-ups, tire rotations, and other regular & expected costs of car ownership?

Do you expect your home-owners insurance to pay for lawn care, snow removal, paint, landscaping, and other regular & expected costs of home ownership?

Then why should your health insurance pay for regular checkups and expected costs associated with living?

You are not looking for "insurance", but rather a medical expense cost sharing plan.

Insurance is supposed to protect your assets/investments in the event of a catastrophic loss. When you expect the regular, anticipated expenses to be paid for, OF COURSE the premiums are going to be high.

A typical doctors visit for a routine checkup is what...$80 or so? Why pay $60/month in additional premiums just to have that $20 co-pay? You'd be better off buying a true insurance policy for a significantly lower premium and pocketing the difference to use when you pay for the regular stuff on your own.

Personally, I've got a $1,750 deductible. Every penny of that deductible has to be paid before BCBS pays out one red cent. $1,751 through $16,750 in medical bills are paid 20% by me and 80% by BCBS. That's where I hit my $4,750 maximum per year out of pocket expense. Any medical expense exceeding $16,750 is paid for 100%. It does EXACTLY what insurance ought to do...it limits my financial liability in the event of a catastrophic occurrence.

When I first bought the policy, it was $65/month...but that was several years ago. It is up to $100/month now.

I COULD have bought a policy with all of the co-pays for twice the premiums. That would have been money out of my pocket, though. ANY expense the insurance company anticipates having is going to be recovered through the premiums. As it is, I've only averaged $1000/year for the cost of my insurance over the time I've had it. WORST case scenario, add another $4750 to that...but that hasn't happened yet and won't happen every year even as I get older. I just don't see the point in paying $4000-$5000/year just to have a plan that covers EVERYTHING....even if NOTHING typically happens.