I’ve basically opted out. I can’t see that the healthcare system has any incentives to keep me healthy. In fact all the incentives are to keep me medicated indefinitely. No thanks. I have a plan for catastrophic coverage but I stay as far away from hospitals and doctors as I can otherwise.
What's your maximum out-of-pocket for the catastrophic plan?
Btw-- make sure to double the MOOP since catastrophes can easily straddle the end of one 12-month period and the beginning of the next 12-month period.
"Maximum out of pocket" is a single dollar amount listed somewhere in your health insurance plan. It'd be in the ballpark of $8 or $9k. (Again, double it.)
If you are saying you only have $5k saved then your plan effectively reduces potential bankruptcy-level of healthcare debt down to a manageable level of healthcare debt.
If you have a high-deductible healthcare plan (HDHP) through an employer, look into setting up regular contributions from your paycheck into a health savings account (HSA). You can use an HSA to build a healthcare emergency fund (and later invest those saving like you would in a regular retirement account, which is what it turns into when you hit retirement age).
As it would happen, we're currently in open enrollment so I looked at what is coming for next year. OOP medical max is $4,000 for employee or $8,000 for family for the HDHP plan. So in the ballpark of what I guessed.
It's an amount that would be somewhat disruptive but would not be bankrupting. That's exactly what you want insurance for. People misunderstand insurance when it comes to health care, they think they should never have to pay out of pocket for anything, but that isn't how insurance works for anything else. Insurance is protection from catastrophe, not something that makes routine, predictable expenses go away.
And yes I have an HSA, it is required for HDHP plans. And I make close to the max contribution every year. I've been at that long enough that I have several multiples of my max OOP saved.
