6 Ways to Tell if You're Financially Ready to Retire

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In recent years, health insurance has more or less really became more of a scam. In the past, it was pretty reasonable, even for a healthy family, but now, for a healthy family, the healthy family is paying out the wazoo to the point the group insurance plans have become worthless as far as I can see it.
Let's see:
Weekly Premium: $27.00
HRA Maximum Amount: $800 (Must do certain things in order to get this, which may intail having to initially spend about $500 for this $800. Example, must spend $25.00 for a flu shot to get credit of this, but yet, for people like me, each of the 3 different years I got the flu shot, I got the flu itself, so I don't get the flu shot.)
Family Deduct: $5,000
Family Max Out Of Pocket: $7,000
Family payment rate after Deduct: 30%
Maintenance drugs must be 90 day mail orders with the following rates:
$75/$150/$225/$300 for Tiers A, B, C and D respectively. As self pay, can get generic drugs a lot cheaper than this $75.00 rate for 3 months without the insurance. Prescription cost under the plan doesn't count toward deduct or max out of pocket.
Regular doctor visit doesn't cost as much as self pay as it does with the insurance out of our own pocket. This cost doesn't count towards the deduct or max out of pocket either.
To see a specialist, it is only a $2.00 to $3.00 savings per 30 minutes with the insurance than as self pay.
Please tell me, where is the real savings by having the health plan for a relatively healthy family, even if something like a broken arm happens to take place? If you don't believe me, I am speaking out of actual experience with this very issue. Even the HR person was selling the benefit onto us and I'm like, what a worthless piece of paper cause all we are really doing is paying them insurers their wages. They aren't doing anything for us as I'm actually paying a lot more with the insurance policy than what I pay without the policy, and I'm only paying 20% of the total cost, if the company's paper work is correct, which I wonder about that as well.

Ronald Dodge of OH 1:41AM December 11, 2009

I agree with the author and disagree with the previous commenter on both of his points.
Individual health insurance purchased on the "open market" is of course more expensive than group insurance with the same coverage. In many cases individual policies can be cheaper, but only with less coverage or more restrictions than a similar group policy. This is especially true for the group the author is referring to - retirees under age 65, not yet eligible for Medicare but typically having much higher claims than those still working.
One may or may not have copays, deductibles, or out of pocket costs if they purchase a supplemental policy. Of course, they have to pay for the policy as well. The website Medicare.gov estimates the average total cost for a 65 year old in good health on Medicare (without prescription drug coverage) to be $4,200, or $8,400 for a couple. In Charlotte, NC, the website shows supplemental policies available with estimated total costs of $3,000 to $4,500 per person per year depending on the benefits covered.
If the average cost for a couple is $8,000 in 2008, that amount will surely increase each year. Assuming typical medical trend rates of 9% grading down to 5% over 8 years, that couple will have paid out $200,000 in less than 16 years. Even if those future payments are discounted back to today (using the current 4% annual rate earned by the Trust Fund), the $200,000 will buy them less than 20 years of coverage. Given the improvements in mortality we are experiencing, many couples will need more than that.

David Kendall of CA 8:09PM August 08, 2008

The writer of this article needs to do her homework. Once on Medicare there are no copays, deductibles, or out of pocket costs if one has a supplement. Rx may be an annual cost if Rx costs exceed $2800 per yr. Now, Long Term Care costs are significant and need to be mitigated by having LTC insurance.
Health ins purchased on the open market is NOT more expensive than group coverage, in fact it is a lot less in most instances. Insurability can be a problem though therefore people need to get their own policy before heart, cancer, obesity conditions arise.
NC and SC folks can go to www.healthcoverages.com for further info.

Ben Howell of SC 8:37AM July 27, 2008