Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

kylejack t1_iuimo9i wrote

It's a donut, basically. If you have very little health stuff, best to go HDHP and not pay the high premiums, since visits will be rare.

If you have major health expenses where you know you are likely to be admitted to a hospital (pregnancy, a dangerous chronic condition, major surgery), you may as well go HDHP, since you know you're going to max out, and benefit from lower premiums.

It's that middle area where PPO usually makes sense. You need regular doctor visits to manage your care, but it's just followup or checkup care, and you want to pay a small co-pay for these visits, knowing you're not likely to eat a big hospital bill.

8

bgr2258 OP t1_iuiotfo wrote

That's what I was suspecting. I'm pretty firmly in the middle area, feeling all of the "high deductible" part without the "oh finally the insurance company is actually helping"

2

kylejack t1_iuiqp5e wrote

On our pregnancy year, we racked up something like $80K and the insurance company had to eat all but $8K of it. Another time, one of us had an urgent major surgery on January 6th and shattered the OOP Max. That was a fun year, because it was free healthcare for the rest of the year. We were getting everything checked out! That's the year I got on allergy immunotherapy, which was a big gamechanger.

7