Excerpt
BETTY ANN BOWSER (Newshour): Dennis Adams is what the insurance industry calls a young invincible.
DENNIS ADAMS, professional dancer: I figured nothing would happen to me. When I was 26 or 25, when I got the plan originally, I had never had surgery, I had never broken a bone, I had never been in an ambulance, I had never been to the hospital.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: So when the non-profit Oberlin Dance Company of San Francisco offered a new type of health insurance three years ago, the 27-year-old professional dancer didn't think twice. He signed up right away.
It was a high-deductible insurance plan that traded lower monthly premiums for higher out-of-pocket costs to employees. In this case, Adams would have to pay $2,500 up front before his health insurance would kick in, if he needed it.
Then, the unthinkable.
DENNIS ADAMS: I got hurt.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: During a performance like this, Adams tore his ACL. When he need an MRI to determine how bad the damage was, the provider demanded the $1,600 test be paid for up front.
Adams was stunned, but, even worse, he didn't have the money. Of the growing number of companies that are going to high-deductible plans, about 23 percent of them offer employees some type of rainy-day option, usually called a health savings account, or HSA. And even though the dance company is a non-profit with a tight bottom line, it puts $100 a month in each employee's account.
The 30 people on the plan can also contribute to it tax-free, and the money rolls over year after year and from job to job. In the end, workers comp paid for Adams' treatment because the injury happened on the job. But for the young dancer, it was a teachable moment. He went back to a traditional plan with higher monthly premiums.
Dr. Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation in Palo Alto, calls this a reshaping of the insurance market
COMMENT: "A reshaping of the insurance market" to feed greed.
Needless to say, Dennis Adams' story fits the Republican sink-or-swim modus operandi. Dennis made the decision so too bad. The typical lack of concern about human beings and their health. Money before people's health.
What it comes down to ANYONE on these plans had better think about what happens if they are in a car accident with injuries. Also consider that they are NOT forever-young and as they get older they WILL need more health care. So they had better have money socked away just in case, but that defeats the purpose of living within a low budget.
Note the young lady with the headaches in the video, her plan does NOT include preventative care, which should include visits for repetitive headaches? I would NEVER use such a plan.
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