I posted this comment to David Henderson’s article When You Lose Something You Don’t Want, Is that Really a Loss?
Last December we decided to drop our health insurance. Our reasoning was pretty simple. Which would make us feel more financially secure, health insurance or an extra $7,500 per year in a savings account?
We did think it through. My wife and I have not filed an insurance claim in over twenty years. We are the perfect health insurance customers so why not take advantage of our good health?
1. Since 2011 our health insurance has increased 13% annually. Medical cost inflation was around 5% annually over the same time period. It sure looks like the health insurance companies were raising rates because they thought they could get away with it.
2. The lowest cost bronze plan for my wife and I exceeds 8.13% of our income. It also was considerably more expensive than our grandfathered health insurance plan which also failed the affordability test. Even though the lack of affordable health insurance makes us exempt from the individual mandate, we are reminded that the ACA failed at its most important mission, affordable health care. When will the ACA or the AHCA start working on this problem?
3. For most of my life, I thought that health insurance was a no-brainer. The ACA completely reversed my position. I no longer believe that giving more money to the healthcare industry is beneficial or compassionate. Although some people maintain that health insurance is the same thing as healthcare, this insularity to healthcare costs bothers me. The politics of the situation has made it easier for the healthcare industry to ignore better-valued healthcare options. As an example when I asked my insurance company for a lower price, they said, “we do not do that”. They could not seem to grasp that healthy people do not want health insurance the same way unhealthy people do. Healthy people tolerate the cost of health insurance up to a point and then they start looking at alternatives in the same way they might change auto insurance. Healthy people are different and the health insurance exchanges are not sustainable without them.
4. How do we send a message to the healthcare industry? Our choice has been to hit them in the pocketbook. We are not trying to be heroes. Their loss is our gain. Every month my wife and I get by without a major medical expense, we win and they lose. It takes only a few months of savings to cover the AHCA pre-existing illness penalty. After a year or so we are in pretty good shape to cover most major medical expenses outside of cancer. At some point, the insurance companies will realize that chasing away their best customers is bad for business.