I have 2 kids, wife doesn't work. 6 figure income, not eligible for obamacare. got it through the marketplace. like i said this is the cheapest one, a "catastrophic plan." people pay more than this? i assumed people with normal jobs paid less than this since their employer pays part of it.

Says it all about what a scam insurance is when people think 450/mo (something that is already clearly a -EV proposition) is "cheap".

im from Canada so it’s “free healthcare” but I looked up how much they take on your income and its up to 710$ CAD yearly, 450 USD a month does sound insane

nevermind I found better source that estimated 28.8% of taxes taken from our income is used for public healthcare, 11000$ CAD for a family of 4 is the average cost for public healthcare

Keep in mind, his $450 plan likely doesn’t cover anything until he hits a 10k deductible. These plans are to prevent you from going bankrupt if you get hit by a car. They’re terrible.

YMMV, but I can’t imagine being responsible for a family of four with no health insurance at all. $450 a month may be expensive but that pales in comparison to having to make financially-focused health care decisions with a critically injured or ill child.

meaning anything under 10k he has to pay full amount? or am I misunderstanding

That’s correct

oh ok that's not great then, how much would be an insurance that covers everything above like... 500$ ?

Somewhere around $1500-$2k. Most employers subsidize this cost.

A normal bronze type plan for two adults two children runs around $1300 a month with a 15k deductible.

From what I can find online, catastrophic plans are only available for people under 30 or who have extenuating financial circumstances. Online I see those things to be bankruptcy, utility shutoffs, medicaid, etc....

I can't see how $450 is achievable as "a friend" pays significantly more.

What company are you using? Asking for a friend..

Disagree. Before Obamacare was a thing I had a catastrophe plan that was something like 50 bucks a month with a 5k deductible. In my financial situation and at my age/health it made all the sense in the world. I didn't need insurance if I got the flu or some bullshit. I needed it in case something horrific happened that could hurt me financially.

Or I could have torched 3-5k a year to save 5k in the unlikely event I ended up hospitalized which would have made zero sense.

I recently had a baby and without insurance it would have been $60,000. This is ~$60,000 to have a baby. I will admit we were in the hospital for a few days and my wife did end up having a C-section, but the idea of spending >$10k/day to have a relatively common procedure and birth is absolutely crazy. Prior to that, I had major health issue in 2019 and was in hospital for around 3 days. Bill was again like $60,000 altogether without insurance. I even took a picture of it somewhere because some of the stuff that was billed was just like... insane.

My wife works for a University and we get our health insurance plan through them which is actually pretty good and the plan we are on is a $2000 deductible I believe. I think we pay a pretty modest amount ~500-1000 range/month and the rest is paid by the Uni as the employer. Getting health insurance without being employed in US and not being on some program are just outrageous prices. When I had a "normal job" lots of guys basically spent a huge % of their pay check just to cover insurance and medical expenses/month for them and their family (like $1500+/month). So, even if your employer is paying a % of the cost for your health insurance it can *still* be very expensive... especially for low deductibles, larger families, or with comorbidities/if you smoke, etc. All those things raise the prices dramatically.

If you don't live in the US, then go on Youtube and just search like, "non US doctor's guess price of medical procedures in US" or something like that. It's really crazy.

After my son was born, this was the cost for him to get some tests done and to have access to the nursery when my wife was recovering. He specifically was billed after just being born, so this isn't any of the costs associated with my wife's c-section/care/recovery etc. I don't have access to her mychart, but decided to try and look up the cost for him and... well yeah, basically not surprised. Again, the bill for my wife was >$50k. Our total cost out of pocket because we have insurance was about 2k or a bit over, but think about if we didn't have good insurance or didn't have insurance at all. Should also be noted he was probably in the nursery I think just two nights (like 12 hours total)... otherwise he was with us in our room.

FYI, the dollar figure you see on the bill is not what your insurance actually pays the hospital and doctors. If the bill said 60k they probably got 15k from your insurer and the rest is written off. If you do not have insurance you can typically do the same thing.

Life hack: I am an attorney and chose to not actually legally marry my wife because she is a stay at home mom and since we are not married in the eyes of the US government she is able to be on Medicaid for her and our two kids because she has no income. We have paid exactly zero dollars and zero cents for birth of both of them and everything else.

Yes, I'm aware. Lots of smoke and mirrors, though.

+1

I can't draw.

Family of 5 (50,48,15,11,&11) - Policy is about $1950/mo. I don't pay it directly but still have to pay it through my company. We cover 60% for employees. It is a fantastic policy, but with the monthly premium, small co-pays, and max out of pocket limits, we pay close to 30K per year before 'insurance' actually pays anything. It is depressing how bad our whole health care system is in the US as it is basically a criminal enterprise that over-charges for everything and extorts every dollar it can from it's citizens. Pisses me off every time I think about it lol.

Turbulence - Obviously don't take advice from some random like me on 2+2, but speak with a financial advisor about this. Depending on your finances and what amount of money would really alter your life if you had to pay it, there are better ways. If you have investments/retirement funds, you may be able to move something like 100K to a fund specifically designed to cover a major health care bill if you incurred it. I would then look at taking the $450 you pay to insurance and set up another fund that you contribute that $450 to every month. One that you can also draw from to pay your normal medical expenses as you need them. You would have to have some special medical circumstances in the first few years to cause you to go -EV in that account. The most likely scenario is that investment account would build over time and you would just draw some from it here and there to cover the normal medical expenses needed and end up with a nice long term investment.

Things to think about though - I would wait until the major milestones are hit first, like child birth, any upcoming surgeries, etc. before looking into it. If you know something major may be coming up, say in a year or so that can't be tracked well as a previous condition, you may be able to grab a policy again to get through that and then go back to your plan a year or so later. You would most likely only be able to do that once though. There are also a lot more 'shared polcies' popping up, especially for self-employed, where a group of 100 or so pool their money together and essentially self-insure the whole group. If you ever hear that 'Christian Health Care' commercial on radio/tv/social media, that is all that is, pooled money to self-insure a large group.

There are options out there and it would be worth at least looking into. Good luck!

I wish I had the cahones to pull these sorts off these sorts of scams, but I'm sure your extra money is at least going back into the economy somehow.

I still wanna find out what company offers a $450 per month catastrophic plan.

Berkey thinks satellites are +ev. Which of course they aren't

ty for the advice. i guess our biggest variable is the fact that we are likely to have more children. if we are likely to have at least a few more children, you'd recommend keeping insurance? in years where my wife give birth i think the insurance is worth it but even then it's barely. because basically it's the 450/month + 8k + expenses for rest of family whereas selfpay birth is like 20k.
for our first child, my wife didnt have insurance (didnt have her green card yet) and i paid like 15-20k for the whole birth (normal birth). So the insurance is basically breakeven in years my wife gives birth, losing in normal years, and peace of mind for possible long hospital stays or serious conditions. Still unsure if it's worth it.

also, those numbers on your bills where it shows those massive deductions are not actually what you save by having insurance, to echo another poster.

for those previous poster asking, basically i pay 450/month and each member of my family has an 8k deductible, and a total family deductible of 18k or something. There are some discounts on copays and random things but its basically pay everything out of pocket until you hit that number. The company is Anthem.

?

My experience is that satellites are very EV for high profile events where a lot of recs try to take a shot. Ive qualified for all national tournaments here in Sweden for a fraction last several years because of satties.

If you try to satellite into stuff like the Titans tournament on stars then I doubt its that much +EV as everyone else is a reg trying to get a discount.

I'm sure some may be +ev and some smart person out there probably has has a formula to figure out which ones. In general though I would say their a losing proposition at least for the folks playing them. Probably great for tournament pros though as they funnel weaker players into the field, something being a discount doesn't make it +ev

Youre literally typing out why they are +EV for good players. Of course for the recs taking a shot its -EV like everything else they play.

If you're a good player it's more +ev to just buy into the tournament imo

Whenever you analyze a game or an event you do it in a vacuum

I satellite doesn’t become negative EV because of some opportunity cost argument

Satellites are often tremendous value