Insurance

When things like this happen people always wonder if money will be an issue. Thank goodness for insurance. When Tom was between jobs and on Cobra, we paid just under $1000 a month for a family of four, $964. Businesses share that cost with their employees as a benefit. Tom's work is no different.

Insurance companies look at the statistics on the chances of one of their customers coming down with a disease like this. It is 1 in a million. They may charge as part of that monthly premium $0.60 for the risk, double it for a little profit, say $1.20 out of that $1000. now multipy that by their customer base of 3,000,000 people. They also share that risk in an insurance pool that all insurance companies pay into to limit their risk. So times that $0.60 by all insured people in America, and the companies has a nice safety net for themself. Not that that is a bad thing, its healthy for everyone, its America.

Our insurance (Blue Cross) covers $350,000 for bone marrow transplants, including testing donors. He also has a max of $100,000 regular insurance that can be billed if we don't end up as a bone marrow transplant or for things that can be charged as regular medical bills. The insurance policy is catistrophic insurance, in that to keep the premiums manageable, and have this nice coverage, the customer pays the first $5000.

Tom's personal company has an in house plan to reimburse the first $2000 of that copay each year, so employees will still get regular physicals. The rest can be put on flexible spending, which is a use it or lose it plan. I don't know why the government wont let you roll over unused flexible medical spending each year. I would love to hear their justification.

So, we are set at the moment. We were told bone marrow transplants run about $200,000 more or less. We are well within our insurance. I think the extra is for those people who need more than one transplant before success. We wont go there.

So, my pitch... insurance works. Its called insurance for a reason. Like life insurance its there for when you need it, but hopefully you never will. Keep government out of it. We should all have catistrophic insurance, and the government should keep its hands off our pre tax flexible spending accounts that we set for ourselves for everyday stuff.

We'll get through this ok.