Corridor 9

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:

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:

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.

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.

$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.

$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.

Recently I received a notice from the Human Resources department about health care and insurance. The memo talked about the rising cost of health care, the fact that the city has so far been able to absorb these costs, and information about the rising price of the plans offered by the city.

Yes, it’s true that insurance is increasing. Lets look at a few statistics:

• In 2006, employer health insurance premiums increased by 7.7 percent - two times the rate of inflation. The annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four averaged nearly $11,500. The annual premium for single coverage averaged over $4,200
• The annual premium that a health insurer charges an employer for a health plan covering a family of four averaged $11,500 in 2006.
• The annual premiums for family coverage significantly eclipsed the gross earnings for a full-time, minimum-wage worker ($10,712).

We’ve got two different plans at Madisonville; a standard, and a premium plan.

So you can see by the chart above that the premium plan gets rid of the deductible, and pays 100% of all in network providers cost, while the standard plan has a higher deductible and only pays 80% of the cost after the deductible is met.

Now, this is nothing new. But let’s look at the price that Meritain Health is charging the city of Madisonville for health insurance.

Now I’m sure you’re looking at this and saying to yourself that this doesn’t seem like much of an increase. I’ll have to agree with you to some extent. It isn’t much of an increase. However, you must also realize that $900 is quite a bit of money to have insurance on your family. This would break down to a minimum wage worker basically working for free 175 hours / month. That’s like working a 44 hour work week for free. But with the rising cost of health care, would you want to take a chance on needing an extra $250,000 to pay for a triple bypass?

I hear you, thats a bit extreme… I’m not even 35 yet. Well… yea, but just think about what it’s going to cost when you’re 50. So, lets get a little less extreme. It’s not that outrageous that you might break your leg sometime soon is it? How much do you think a broken leg costs? Try $50,000 if you need surgery, titanium pins, and physical rehab. Oh., and another thing. Look at the first row, first column of the table above. See it? It says Standard. So, lets take a look at the rate increase for the Premium plans.

See the difference? We’re talking almost double the previous price for a premium insurance plan. Thats $24,540 dollars per year! Lets look at our poor minimum wage worker now; he’s going to have to work 4,765 hours (roughly 595 8-hour days) just to pay for 365 day worth of medical insurance. Thats outrageous… no, actually outrageous doesn’t even begin to come close. Oh, and last I heard, there were only 6 people in the entire city with family insurance so it’s not like Meritain is out a load of insurance
claims every year.

So now the big question… WHY? WHY is it so much for health insurance for my family? WHY is it more than double last years rates for premium insurance? WHY are we still with Meritain? There has to be a better way!