Is Health Insurance necessary?

I pay $590 a month for myself, my spouse, and one dependent. In NC

Really considering going self-pay too. Or doing a monthly membership at a place does Direct Primary Care

@Miranda thats what we did the past 2 years because we were irresponsible newlyweds but now that we have a kid Im afraid of a random cancer or random accident that requires a good chunk of upfront payment. Even if I set that money aside it might not be enough for a major sickness event 🥹

I think it’s necessary, but also for a peaceful mind. We pay $350/month, and that includes $150 towards our HSA.

I don’t have ins so I’m paying a midwife out of pocket. Labs and u/s are half the price self pay lol but we have hospital indemnity, so if I end up there it’s treated like self pay but that ins just pays me what we owe (up to whatever amount we signed up for) it’s like $20-40 a month. My husband sells insurance and knows how much of a scam it is, so we’ll do a plan with an actual office/provider.

@Lindsay its yours through work? That sounds like a great deal.

@Kelsea is that like Aflac? I totally forgot about that option girl!

Definitely not. Insurance is the reason things are marked up to extreme prices

We are 550k in medical debt because we didn’t have insurance. Nuff said.

Sheesh! Are you not getting health insurance through a job? For my daughter and I, I pay monthly $92 for medical, $6 for dental and $0.81 for vision. We have Cigna through my job. When I was between jobs I paid $250 for Kaiser through Marketplace

@Candice the insurance through my husband’s job is top tier and would cost us $400 a WEEK. Marketplace insurance was much cheaper but way less benefits for still that amount of money in my opinion. We couldn’t qualify for any discount 🫠

@Candice I get insurance that’s paid 100% through my job. Prior to that we paid $3000 a month for a group policy health insurance through my husbands work for our family.

@SquishyMommy1 Fuck. My biggest fear is not be able to afford care out of pocket but many health insurances will deny claims out of nowhere anyways 🫠

@Ana Moore we both have really great insurance. They cover most everything even if it makes me want to pull my hair out. My insurance up and changed my medication tiers for 2025 and my meds I need to live went up to $120 a month until I hit my medication deductible ($500). Obnoxious! But still not the $500 we paid per month for me to be on my husbands. I would rather play Russian roulette with what they will or won’t they pay for then not have insurance. Ever again. I shattered my wrist without insurance and we had a child that had 5 inpatient stays for serious mental health issues and we are paying for it. Well actually not paying for it. Because we just aren’t paying for the debt 🤷🏼‍♀️

@Kelsea Can you go into more detail about this? You contact a specific Dr and they make a plan with you?

@SquishyMommy1 Ugh I might need to bite this bullet 💸. Im sick and tired of being an adult already.

@Ana Moore I highly advise it. My shattered wrist after surgery was $78,546 in the end. I fell down 2 stairs. Yes 2 stairs. You never know when you’ll need it.

@SquishyMommy1 I would be pissed

@Ana Moore I was too much in pain to be pissed 😂😂😂😂😂😂. But I am really just pissed at the whole system. I need special anesthesia because I have the red headed gene. It costs way more. Plus the ER visit. All the X-rays. The surgery. Blah blah blah. Insane.

I feel like the point of insurance is if something happens that you couldn’t afford. Try catastrophic insurance with a really high deductible? Certainly your kid needs to have insurance…

@Grayson yes! Vaccines for example. I’m lucky that our PCP is part of our state program for free vaccines. Before we had insurance we only had to pay for the time to inject them. Which was $23. Because the vaccines were free. Otherwise we would have had to pay for the vaccines too.

@Grayson Im looking into aflac at least for this year since we have such a close date to make a decision. Doctor visits are the least of my worries since we have lived without insurance this entire time. Uninsured kids don’t pay for vaccines in Texas and our favorite pediatrician is only $150 per visit. He wouldn’t even be covered in this blue shield insurance policy.

@Lindsay you have a beautiful family

@Ana Moore it is through work. I haven’t stepped out and into self-pay. But there are tax benefits to self-pay if you itemize your expenses 🤷🏽‍♀️

@djAaammm🫶🏻 aw, thank you so much 🥰💖

What do you get for $640, because damn! Super thankful for the NHS. I paid £112 a month.

No that’s actually insane. Being a stay at home mom gives me and my toddler free health care. There’s no way in heck I’d be able to afford that. They just come up with random numbers and give it out I swear

Reading all these comments about the cost, I’m like “damn! 😳”. I don’t know much about insurance but as far as I know, I don’t pay anything. When I no longer was under my mother’s health insurance, I got my own. Now, my kids and husband are under my health insurance.

@Helen $1000 deductible, I think $30 copay in primary care $100 specialist, $160 ER and some random other deductible and amounts that they cover. Vision and dental are super basic. I don’t like the fact that they don’t cover my doctors of choice, I need to use through their network.

@Sami Im a SAHM too and for some reason I thought we would also have some kind of discount. Nope.

@s a r a 🥀 is it through work? Medicare/Medicaid?

@Ana Moore No, not through work. Possibly through Medicare/Medicaid, yeah.

@Candice my work insurance to cover 3 people is 962 dollars per two week pay period LOL so no, some of us aren’t getting insurance through work

@Kaylyn not all doctors will do this but it’s called direct primary care. They would probably have opened an office specifically to do this. You can pay a monthly fee to that office but emergencies and specialists aren’t covered. There’s also cost sharing insurance (usually Christian companies) that cover everything over $1000. Worth looking into.