Health Insurance EV question

[punter11235]

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Personally, i leave the gambling to the pokerrooms and not my life. Being cheap with your health just isnt a good idea. EV or no EV.




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What is this ?
ZeeBoo asked legimitimate interesting question and now ppl are telling him not to gamble with his life. C'mon.
Insurances are -EV, for houses , for health and for lives or for anything else. For each insurance there exists bankroll level on which taking this insurance is not wise (to say the least). Now our task is to estimate this level.
Unfortunately I wont give it a shot cause I have no idea what medical costs can be. I would guess 1.5 of a big one would be good enough. Cause even losing unlikely 200k then wont be a disaster.

best wishes

[Theodore Donald Kiravatsos]

I ain't reading all the posts here...sorry if this is duplicated...

What you can buy now is stuff called "High Deductible" health insurance. If you get the right plan, you would pay out of pocket your first $2000 of claims or so, per year, and then get everything covered after that. From an dollar EV standpoint, this will be your lowest premiums and still provide a lot of protection if something horrible happens.

Check with your insurer and make sure that they can rate you by your age. If not (age-specific rating did not used to be legal for BCBS in Michigan, just legal for EVERYONE ELSE), then there will be no way in hell you are paying proper rates for someone your age. This will most likely not apply where you live, but just thought I'd throw that out there.

You might even want to consider that someone may ask you to pee for them, I don't know much about individual insurance. Although I realize that that applies more to Life Insurance, health insurers are getting more and bigger pickles up their butts these days.

[obsidian]

You should at least get major medical. The big problem is something major happening and wiping out your bankroll (or a large portion of it) which costs you potential money you would have made.

[MyTurn2Raise]

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You should at least get major medical. The big problem is something major happening and wiping out your bankroll (or a large portion of it) which costs you potential money you would have made.

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this post is exactly right and the reason that I, a healthy 26 year old, carry major medical for under $100 a month. The possibility of a large negative event is too big for me to ignore

[Guthrie]

If you're young, single, healthy, and never go to a doctor, buy major medical with a very big deductible and play the odds on the small stuff. One night in a hospital can easily be 30K. The big stuff can bankrupt you. These days it may well bankrupt you even if you do have health insurance.

None of it really matters anyway. Within five years there will be no more employer-paid health insurance, and within ten years the health care industry will have bankrupted the entire country with their obscene prices.

My wife and I self-insure a lot of risks, either by not carrying insurance at all (dental, vision), or by carrying a very high deductible (auto, homeowners).

We both have employer-provided medical, and despite a significant net worth, we would not self-insure this risk. As others have mentioned, at least get coverage to take care of the big injuries.

1. Catastrophic/long-term medical care is outrageously expensive.

2. If you can pay regular doctor visits/lab work/meds out of pocket, fine (although even that stuff can add up)

3. If you are seriously injured, you will likely also lose your earning power due to being incapacitated... so medical injury is a "double whammy"

[FlFishOn]

...under usual circumstances. If you can somehow 'past-post' then you might find a +EV situation.

Get married to a woman with a steady job and health insurance.

I figured I'd post this as a cautionary tale.

I had always been very healthy. In shape, exercised, ate well, etc. Right after I graduated from college at age 21, I had several part-time jobs, but none with benefits, so I got health insurance on my own. That fall I got ridiculously sick for no apparent reason and almost died. Without boring anyone with details, I ended up spending a month in the hospital three times over the next year and a half after some surgery complications. The doctors never really figured out where the problems came from, only that the random abdominal infection was bacterial.

The bottom line is that the total expenses were over half a million dollars. Without insurance, I shudder to think what would have happened. With it, I still had to fork over a some of my savings, but since I was a compulsive saver, that didn't affect my future much.

So I laugh/cringe whenever someone says they don't need health insurance. You just never know. The $1000-1500 I spent that year ended up saving my future, both literally and financially. Plus when you've almost died, the bad beats don't hurt quite as bad.

[J-Lo]

What's the number one reason people file for chapter 7 bankruptcy?

medical bills

GET INSURANCE.