Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
Health insurance is only +EV for people who have something to lose. When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

If you're poor in the US and become sick or injured, you go to an emergency room and they are forced to treat you whether you have any money or not. You run up $5000 or $50,000 in medical bills, then you declare bankruptcy later on. This ruins your credit, but if you were poor, you didn't care about your credit anyway.

And it's not as if it's really a choice, if you're poor enough you couldn't afford medical insurance anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is really bad advice, if you're serious.

While it's true that emergency rooms have to treat and stabilize you, they do not have to make you well. For example, let's say you suffer an eye injury and go to the emergency room with no health insurance. They have to stop the bleeding and make sure that your condition is stable. But now let's say 2 months down the line, you need an operation or you'll lose the sight in that eye. Well, if you can't pay for it, you are plain out of luck. No one is obligated to pay for your surgery.

Also, even for routine medical procedures and visits, etc, being without insurance means you'll be charged from 2-10 times what someone with insurance gets charged (since the companies negotiate reduced rates for all procedures).

I'm a risk adverse person, but I would not feel comfortable without health insurance unless my bankroll was in the $10,000,000 range.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

First, this question is irrelevant when you are married or live with your girlfriend. Try explaining this is +EV not to take insurance.

One risk may be if you are hit by a car and the hospital treating you knows you don't have insurance and is afraid of not being paid. I would fear I wouldn't get the best treatment possible, I may be wrong here.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
First, this question is irrelevant when you are married or live with your girlfriend. Try explaining this is +EV not to take insurance.

One risk may be if you are hit by a car and the hospital treating you knows you don't have insurance and is afraid of not being paid. I would fear I wouldn't get the best treatment possible, I may be wrong here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh please.. Yet again you idiots don't know what you are talking about. They will give you the same treatment regardless if you have insurance or not. They don't put a non-insured sticker on your chart, LOL

You can also get medicaid if you needed an operation that you could not afford.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

Reading how your post is written I hesitate to consider its content as undoubtedly reliable.

Here is a snippet from a study on health coverage:
"When they (the uninsured) are hospitalized, they are
more likely to receive fewer services and to die in the hospital than are insured patients." kkf.org

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

Getting hit by a car, is one of the only times you dont need health insurance as you are either covered by your Motor Vehical Insurance and the other Drivers insurance depending on the state you are residing in.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
Oh please.. Yet again you idiots don't know what you are talking about. They will give you the same treatment regardless if you have insurance or not. They don't put a non-insured sticker on your chart, LOL


[/ QUOTE ]

OK, here's a hypothetical:
You get hit by a car, you go to the emergency room, and they save your life, as they are required to do.

Once you're stabilized, the doctor comes in and tells you that the accident caused serious spinal injuries and you will have to go through extensive rehab in order to be able to walk again.

Do you think that the hospital or any rehab is going to provide this rehab service to you free of charge?

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
Getting hit by a car, is one of the only times you dont need health insurance as you are either covered by your Motor Vehical Insurance and the other Drivers insurance depending on the state you are residing in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you ever stop to think that the other driver may be driving without insurance or that you may be involved in an accident with serious injuries and everyone only took the minimal amount of insurance (10K in mystate)? As I said in a previous post 10K of medical bills is nothing for a serious accident.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

I don't think you will convice Gabby.

He is convinced that the majority of 2+2er's are living near the poverty level, and of course insurance is simply for those dumb rich folk who don't realize that they could get the same services for free if God decides to send a lightnin' bolt outta da blue onto your ass ( I mean really what are da odds of sumthin happening to me? gotta be 1 in a thousand (dat is the same almost as 1 in a million ya know?)) Now it might take a few months to get medicaid coverage and they might not cover the same stuff as private insurance (but it is medicaid you know. I have heard good things about them, besides if they don't cover it, I must not need it anyway, right?)

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
First, this question is irrelevant when you are married or live with your girlfriend. Try explaining this is +EV not to take insurance.

One risk may be if you are hit by a car and the hospital treating you knows you don't have insurance and is afraid of not being paid. I would fear I wouldn't get the best treatment possible, I may be wrong here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh please.. Yet again you idiots don't know what you are talking about. They will give you the same treatment regardless if you have insurance or not. They don't put a non-insured sticker on your chart, LOL

You can also get medicaid if you needed an operation that you could not afford.

[/ QUOTE ]

Boy, are you living in a fool's paradise.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

Most insurance is a scam.

It benefits from the unproven folk wisdom that "you HAVE to have it". It's nice to have a comprehensive plan that covers everything. As long as someone else is paying the premiums.

Otherwise, get an inexpensive catastrophic coverage policy with a $2 million limit. No prescriptions, no doctor visits, $5000 deductible. Then pay cash for everything. Standard discounts are 20%-%50 just for the asking. Shop around. Tell your doctor you are uninsured. My doctor saves all his valuable samples for uninsured patients. If your doctor won't do this, find another. Last year, I needed a CAT scan for my arm. The doc said it would cost at least $1000. I found a clinic specialized, got the scan, radiologist review and report for about $200.

Better yet, pay all your bills with credit cards and get miles (plus your discount, of course).

Buy your drugs online or at Costco.
If you end up in an ambulance or hospital, if you are lucid scan the form they want you to sign. Cross out arbitration clauses and anything else onerous -- they probably won't even notice. When you get the bill, review it with a billing administrator and question every single line. Demand that they remove anything they can't clearly justify medically. (I was charged $200 for salt water. They removed it.) If you find yourself needing an expensive operation, consider Canada or Thailand. Bumrumgrad Hospital is world class at a fraction of US cost. Combine it with a vacation and write off the travel cost as a medical expense.

Health care is really no different from other expenses.
You can pay list price and get nothing, or with a little legwork get real value at a fraction of what "everybody" pays.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

You can get catastrophic-only medical insurance. It is available for medical emergencies that will cost you a minimum of $10,000 - and you can fund the rest yourself.

A 21-year old with no medical problems can probably get a decent HMO plan for about $150-$200 a month, depending on where you live. Consider taking that amount and puting it into a low-risk, low yeild mutual fund. If you earn 5%+ then you will have more than the $10K available in less than 4 years, then you can stop funding if you want, or keep puting the money away, and you will have an excellent start on a serious retirement fund.

Dogmeat [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

Poker players don't make enough not to have insurance.

Myself for example a picture of health at 18 into sports etc etc. Come down with a sudden illness while on summer vacation. End up having emergency surgery and spending 10 days in hospital and am currently on meds which would set me back roughly 36K a year

Going to the Pharmacy every 2 months to go get your meds and seeing a bill which says :
Total Cost 6,000.00
Paitent pays 0.00

It's kind of -EV one shouldn't be living without.

I equate health insurance to insuring 20 against a ace in BJ. Except that the entire table pitches in the money to insure your 20 rather then you paying yourself. so overall it is negative EV except when its your 20 then its EV+ as the table is paying for the majority of it.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
Poker players don't make enough not to have insurance.

Myself for example a picture of health at 18 into sports etc etc. Come down with a sudden illness while on summer vacation. End up having emergency surgery and spending 10 days in hospital and am currently on meds which would set me back roughly 36K a year

Going to the Pharmacy every 2 months to go get your meds and seeing a bill which says :
Total Cost 6,000.00
Paitent pays 0.00

It's kind of -EV one shouldn't be living without.

I equate health insurance to insuring 20 against a ace in BJ. Except that the entire table pitches in the money to insure your 20 rather then you paying yourself. so overall it is negative EV except when its your 20 then its EV+ as the table is paying for the majority of it.

[/ QUOTE ]
I understand that this can happen to anyone, but if it did then the health insurance companies would increase the cost or go bankrupt. This is simply an EV decision and health insurance is far from +EV. However, being totally ruined from a health problem is what you really need to prevent here and something that would cover all $10000+ problems sounds like the best idea.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

I pay my health insurance premium before all other bills.Also, if you are self employed and have a working spouse I would suggest getting insurance on your own and not through their employer.This way if they ever quit or get fired you still have coverage and you can then add them onto your policy.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

Too busy to read the replies but if no one mentioned it, one of the biggest reasons to get health insurance is that insurance companies get bargained prices. They pay only a fraction of what youd have to pay a doctor directly.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

zeebo-

health insurance is +eUtility because of decreasing marginal utility of $.

You probably know what this is or can figure it out but for those that dont, it just means that a dollar is worth more when you are poor and less when you are rich in terms of utility.

So the money lost is more damaging when you lose a lot of cash due to an operation than the small amount of money you pay for insurance, even if they have the same expected value. i.e. if you lose $100 10% of the time for health reasons and it costs 10$ to be fully insured, you should prefer to fully insure yourself. This is the because the $ vs utility curve is generally modeled as a logarithmic function.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

As I understand it, the number one or number two reason people declare bankruptcy is that they have medical bills they cannot afford to pay. Young or not, accidents happen and illness happens. One brief hospitalization can run up tens of thousands in debt. Health insurance is expensive, but given the potential downside of catastrophic financial loss, it is way +EV.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
Health insurance is expensive, but given the potential downside of catastrophic financial loss, it is way +EV.

[/ QUOTE ]

Insurance is always -EV no matter whats your financial situation.
But EV is not good enough criterium to make decisions which are big comparing to your bankroll. So for example if you earn 100k/year you surely should get an insurance but if you eartn 100millions/year you dont need an insurance because you will not get hurt (financially) even by 365 day hospitalization.
Now 100millions is definitely exageration, so the question is on which level of bankroll/salary you can forget about health insurance...

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
This is the because the $ vs utility curve is generally modeled as a logarithmic function.

[/ QUOTE ]

I heard about that but dont agree that it is "generally modeled" that way. Do you happen to have links to some sources about the subject because I am really interested in it.
Best wishes

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
Most insurance is a scam.

It benefits from the unproven folk wisdom that "you HAVE to have it". It's nice to have a comprehensive plan that covers everything. As long as someone else is paying the premiums.

Otherwise, get an inexpensive catastrophic coverage policy with a $2 million limit. No prescriptions, no doctor visits, $5000 deductible. Then pay cash for everything. Standard discounts are 20%-%50 just for the asking. Shop around. Tell your doctor you are uninsured. My doctor saves all his valuable samples for uninsured patients. If your doctor won't do this, find another. Last year, I needed a CAT scan for my arm. The doc said it would cost at least $1000. I found a clinic specialized, got the scan, radiologist review and report for about $200.

Better yet, pay all your bills with credit cards and get miles (plus your discount, of course).

Buy your drugs online or at Costco.
If you end up in an ambulance or hospital, if you are lucid scan the form they want you to sign. Cross out arbitration clauses and anything else onerous -- they probably won't even notice. When you get the bill, review it with a billing administrator and question every single line. Demand that they remove anything they can't clearly justify medically. (I was charged $200 for salt water. They removed it.) If you find yourself needing an expensive operation, consider Canada or Thailand. Bumrumgrad Hospital is world class at a fraction of US cost. Combine it with a vacation and write off the travel cost as a medical expense.

Health care is really no different from other expenses.
You can pay list price and get nothing, or with a little legwork get real value at a fraction of what "everybody" pays.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your suggestions are easy to make but ridiculously difficult to actually do. One hospital visit will leave you with itemized bills of literally hundreds of pages, listing codes and abbreviations you have no clue about. And when you're sick, do you really have the energy or knowledge to dig into it all.
And go to Thailand for an operation? Fine if not urgent, but the travel costs ain't cheap.
I agree that our health insurance system is a farce and a tremendously inefficient burden on everyone. But unless you're all willing to adopt a single payer (meaning government paid and regulated) system, it is what we have to live with. And given the choice of dealing with it or without it, I'd much rather have the insurance (and overpay) for it than do without.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

Move to Denmark. Here we dont have to pay health insurances - and the doctors dosent have to be affraid that some twisted fool will make a lawsuit cause the doctor broke his ribb while doing heart massage.
We pay tax - alot - but noone have to be affraid to die because they dont have money for an operation or medicin.
We are an industrial country u know....we dont leave people to die in the streets.....

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

No one is left to die in the street in the US. You don't know what you're talking about.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
we dont leave people to die in the streets.....



[/ QUOTE ]

Get your facts straight.

We just shoot them here. If they happen to die in the street... meh

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

well, its really actually always modeled that way. I dont really feel like looking for links but an easy one is http://web.mit.edu/14.41/www/PS4_2005.pdf

Check out problem 4. Thats pretty much how it always is in my experience.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

Given the fairly new laws regarding Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) I can't see why it would be practicle to be without health insurance.

Here's a linky to explain them a little further. Basically you get a high deductable, lower cost policy and get to contribute the amount of your deductable every year before taxes and the amount of the deductable that you don't use grows tax free.

Health Savings Accounts

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

HSA's are by far the most sensible innovation in U.S. health care in decades. Unfortunately, hardly anyone knows much about them. MSA's, their former incarnation, had the same problem.

MSA's had a fatal flaw: they didn't allow deductibles over $2000/yr. (Why? Apparently, politicians consider high-deductible plans to be "well-person plans" -- i.e., for the rich.) HSA's now allow up to a $5000 deductible.

There's no guarantee HSA's will last, as they are quite controversial. But for now, the time and trouble of setting one up is likely a very good investment.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

[ QUOTE ]
Also most people under 35 will not have any major illnesses except an injury from an auto accident. Accident related injuries are usually covered by your auto insurance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Correct that most won't, but life is unpredictable and it is all too common for weird medical issues to arise.

$75,000 later worth of chemo, scans, etc. I would disagree with you that thinking you can go without insurance. One of the reasons those who play poker professionaly and discount the value of medical insurance as a benefit bothers me.

Also get life insurance while you are still eligable and it is pretty cheap! I have some, but not as much as I wish I did.

I am great today and expected to live a full life, just don't qualify for anymore life insurance right now.

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

Thank you for that link
My concern is that utility function must have upper bound to be reliable, here is why.
I may be way off here but I suspect that some kind of logarithm function is often chosen becaue logarithm is first function which come to mind when you seek for function increasing slower and slower.

Best wishes

Re: Health Insurance EV question
 

There's some good info in this thread, but a few points:

1. Bill Gates would have insurance. He would have to have insurance because it is required to have a mortgage. He would have a mortgage because he could make more on the money investing it elsewhere than he could by leaving it in the house. (The house will appreciate, and he will earn that appreciation whether or not he has a mortgage -- but he can borrow the money at a low interest rate and invest it quite safely and get more money than that.)

2. The question isn't merely what is the EV of insurance -- we also need to ask about the variance. That's what people are keying in on when the talk about the potential for a huge cost -- critical care carries an enormous variance.

3. There is value to maintaining your economic stability. Perhaps you have enough capital to self-insure; lets say you have $100,000. It's not cash. If you end up in the hospital for a month with critical care need, you may need to pay $50k now and another $50k over the next few months in followup. Is everything fine? You have the money, right?

Well, where do you have the money? Part of it is invested in stocks; is it the right time to sell them? The market is down and you were waiting for specific product announcements for you stocks to peak. . . And part of it is invested in the multi-family house you live in. You can't sell it, you need to live somehwere, and the rental income will support you while you can't play. And part of it was invested in a start-up business some aquaintances were doing. It's a good investment, but the money can't be pulled out right now. . .

After you've cashed everything out, and paid the bills, where are you? Broke. Having enough to survive the event isn't enough -- you need bankroll to make more money, or you need money to invest to earn money. And, after the hit, you no longer have the money to self-insure, and now you need insurance!

So my point: it's not just the risk of having to pay out; it's the disruption caused by the paying. Having to limit your investment options to accommodate the sudden need, as well as the consequence of having to lose all or most of the money in an unlikely event.

Stability is key for planning well -- that's why mortgage companies require insurance!