Rising Cost of Insurance or Greedy Insurance Companies?
This is one of those “you have to see it to believe it” stories. You may remember a little post here last April about the insurance company that the city has raising their insurance rates. Well, it’s April again and naturally the insurance rates went up again. It’s almost too much to handle this time.
Let’s refresh our memory on what each plan offers:
| (P)= Per person (F)= Family |
Standard | Premium |
| Deductible (P): | $500 | $0 |
| Deductible (F): | $1,000 | $0 |
| Out of Pocket Max (P): | $1,000 | $500 |
| Out of Pocket Max (F): | $2,000 | $1,000 |
| Coverage after Deductible: | 80% | 100% |
| Non-Preferred Providers: | 70% | 70% |
As with before, the “standard” insurance plan that covers roughly 80% of the medical bills went up marginally. Note that when I say it went up marginally I’m talking about about $110 increase for a family plan. Not that I could afford a family plan mind you as it’s now over $1000 per month out of pocket expense. I don’t know about you… but $1000 a month is a lot to pay for family insurance.
Let’s have a look at the new rates:
| Standard Plan |
New Rates / Month | Old Rates / Month |
| Employee | $0 | $0 |
| Emp / Dependant | $365.20 | $326.62 |
| Emp / Spouse | $512.14 | $446.35 |
| Family | $1004.28 | $892.69 |
As with last year, it doesn’t seem like that much of an increase. But let’s look at our minimum wage worker again and see how many hours a month he’s working for free.
You did catch that right? No? Let me elaborate a bit more for you
Make sense now? Yea… the average worker would need to work 4.3 weeks per month for free just to afford family insurance. But wait you say…. isn’t minimum wage going up this year? Well, yes it is, and just for you I’ll calculate a family plan at the new minimum wage.
153 hours for insurance / 40 hour work week = 3.8 weeks
But wait! There’s more! You didn’t forget that we’re looking at the insurance rates per month of the standard plan did you? How about we take a look at the new Premium Insurance rates.
| Premium Plan |
New Rates / Month | Old Rates / Month |
| Employee | $387.91 | $127.71 |
| Emp / Dependant | $1458.13 | $824.93 |
| Emp / Spouse | $1859.47 | $1086.38 |
| Family | $3330.94 | $2044.99 |
$3330 a month for insurance! I can’t afford that…. can you? Can anyone? Lets work this problem backwards; lets see how much money someone would have to make if they wanted to work every month just for insurance.
$3330 per month for insurance / 160 of work per month = $20.81 per hour
$20.81 per hour, or roughly 4 times minimum wage. Not for bills, not for food, just for insurance.When is it going to end? At this rate, in 5 years, family insurance will be $9760.69. Once again, the word outrageous doesn’t even come close to the atrocity that is happening to the average worker.
Insurance should be affordable, useful, and easily available. Even at the standard rate, these terms don’t fit when talking about the Meritain Insurance that the city has. Isn’t it time that we start looking other places for insurance? Isn’t it time we start taking care of our employees?
I guess there is a bright side to this; at least the cost isn’t double, like it was last year.
