Snidly Whiplash
Rookie
- Mar 9, 2008
- 3
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I was playing around with Blue Cross's website, and made up a fake family to find out what kind of coverage they could get. I assumed a 30 yr old mother and father with no preexisting conditions, avg. height and weight, and two 8 yr old kids.
For $160 a month, I can get basically bankruptcy protection. The health-care coverage is minimal, the deductible is $5000/$10,000, but I won't go broke if one my hypothetical kids came down with Leukemia.
For $300 a month, I can get some actual coverage, if I stay within the network of providers. The insurance picks up 70% of most costs, there's some drug benefits, and the deductible is $500/$1000. People could live with a plan like that. Let's assume the govt. plan would mirror this and cost approx. the same.
Ok then, so about $300 for the typical family. Let's also assume there's about 10 million families out there with no coverage at all, and another 10 million with crappy coverage who would take the national plan. Just a ball-park figure based on the 40 million or so uninsured in America these days.
Easy math. $6 billion a month to cover 20 million typical families. Let's even assume a 50% cost increase based on govt. ineffciency, waste, and people with pre-existing conditions/less than optimal health. $9 billion a month. That's still less than what we're spending on Iraq.
I'm a little surprised how that came out. That's fairly decent coverage, and I was expecting it to cost a lot more.
For $160 a month, I can get basically bankruptcy protection. The health-care coverage is minimal, the deductible is $5000/$10,000, but I won't go broke if one my hypothetical kids came down with Leukemia.
For $300 a month, I can get some actual coverage, if I stay within the network of providers. The insurance picks up 70% of most costs, there's some drug benefits, and the deductible is $500/$1000. People could live with a plan like that. Let's assume the govt. plan would mirror this and cost approx. the same.
Ok then, so about $300 for the typical family. Let's also assume there's about 10 million families out there with no coverage at all, and another 10 million with crappy coverage who would take the national plan. Just a ball-park figure based on the 40 million or so uninsured in America these days.
Easy math. $6 billion a month to cover 20 million typical families. Let's even assume a 50% cost increase based on govt. ineffciency, waste, and people with pre-existing conditions/less than optimal health. $9 billion a month. That's still less than what we're spending on Iraq.
I'm a little surprised how that came out. That's fairly decent coverage, and I was expecting it to cost a lot more.
