Getting health insurance through work now costs nearly $20,000

The question is: given a choice, do families want to spend $20,000 per year?
Should people be given a choice? Or should governments continue to mandate and control insurance?
Who gets to decide if they need to spend their money that way?

employer-health-insurance

Higher premiums on insurance are mostly masked.

• Masked by employers.
• Masked by Obamacare subsidies
• Masked by Medicare expenditures

Most people don't know what their own healthcare costs.

What they do feel are the higher exposures through higher deducetibles and copays.

"A quarter of all workers face deductibles of at least $2,000, up from 15% five years ago.

Employers have sought to limit premium increases by raising deductibles instead. But large deductibles are among Americans' main complaints about their health coverage."

ANOTHER WAY to mask the true cost: limited networks.
This was perhaps Obamacare's greatest bait-and-switch maneuver. Limited doctor networks to make the cost seem low, along with the infamous promise: "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."

Overlooked solutions:

• Health Savings Accounts
• Telemedicine

Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)

A Super-IRA for your medical expenses. HSAs allow you to put money in TAX-DEDUCTIBLE and pull money out TAX-FREE for medical purposes. Any money you don't spend is yours to keep; and you can invest it just like an IRA. With this approach, every medical bill becomes a get-out-of-jail-free card for your money.

For many families, they DON'T SPEND MONEY 10 or 11 months out of the year. What if they could save it and use it later when needed?

Telemedicine

If a tree falls in the forest...

If companies provide telemedicine,
                  but nobody actually uses it...

More large companies are offering coverage for telemedicine visits with providers, such as through videoconferencing or remote monitoring. The share skyrocketed to 74% this year, up from 27% in 2015, according to the Kaiser study.

Employees, however, have yet to embrace the new technology. Only 0.51% of those in large employer plans had at least one telemedicine visit in 2016, the latest data available.

"Lots of companies are paying for telemedicine, but very few employees are using it," said Matthew Rae, senior health policy analyst at Kaiser.