What Do You Pay for Health Insurance?

I work at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and my position's salary and benefits are negotiated for by the AFSME Union so I don't actually pay for my insurance. However, I do get a statement with my paycheck that lists everything the U pays for me including my health coverage. I have Welmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Iowa (Blue Advantage plan) and the U pays $776/month for it. That includes me, my spouse or life partner, and any children or dependants I may have, no change in price if I cover just me. Hope that helps!

For a family of 3 that is VERY reasonable. I pay that for myself. If I were to add my son it would cost nearly $1,000 a month.

I pay $260 pretax for family coverage(which is 20% of the cost), my employer pays the other 80%. Our dental is $14/month for family coverage. My husbands work was similar but with a little less of what we get with mine. I am in St. Paul and my husband is out in Blaine. I know my friends pay slightly more than me but not much.

That's in the ball park of what we pay for family coverage through my husband's employer. He is a partner in a limited partnership and therefore considered "self-employed." We pay extra for dental coverage, which is completely separate. Our co-pay is $20 and our co-pays for medications increased significantly lately, but other than that most things are covered.

I carry full coverage for my family (one kid is the same as 10) through Healthpartners, and I pay 125 about every 2 weeks. That is the best plan--no deductible, just copays.

I pay $ 432 a month for myself, my husband, and two kids.

Hi, C.. When my spouse and I looked into changing my single insurance to family at my employer, it meant a jump of over $500! At a colleague's suggestion, I went to the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Iowa website and chose a plan that covered my spouse and child--all for about $185/month. (That was 6+ years ago.) After some job changes, we returned to that kind of plan for my spouse and 2 children--we pay $207/month. Their coverage is with the same company my employer uses, but this is at a substantial savings to us. If we were to go with this same coverage through my employer, it would mean $650+ out of my paycheck monthly! I'd highly recommend going online to see what kind of coverage you can get.

Good luck!
S.

Generally, the larger the company, the cheaper the insurance. It's like supply and demand. The more people on the plan, the more the insurance company gets per month, the less of a hit the insurance company takes for medical bills. That keeps the premiums down.
We own a remodeling company so we have a small group plan for our employees. My husband and I and our 2 birth children are on there and it's $800 per month for BC/BS. Our youngest daughter is special needs so there are lots of things that she needs that the insurance won't pay for. So our wonderful state will offer us TEFRA supplemental insurance for her and it will only cost us $500 per month! :o( The adopted/foster children have MA.
Hope this helps,
J.
Mom to 4, soon another and hopefully more :o)

C.

I handle my company's benefits and I can explain the "family plan". The employer is charged by the insurance company by the number of individuals on the plan, but the way an employer offers the insurance can vary.

When you are offered a family plan, the employer pays for every dollar over the amount you pay so if you have more kids the employer pays more for your family than for another co-worker that has only 1 child.

$550-650 for a family is pretty average from the information I am involved with both at my company and my husbands (and he recently had a merger so we saw our plan change but the rate was about the same).

You should understand that the family plan option is not offered by all employers because it can be exorbient to the employer for larger families. And as you've probably figured out, can be unfair to us that have less children as far as the value of our benefit vs the value of another employee's benefit.

I hope this helps.

My fiance is free because he's in the union!

Because he's technically not full time more like part time 36hrs. week he's not eligible for family insurance. If he was full time we'd be covered as well for free. You could look into a different job prehaps.

So the kids and myself are on MN Care. We pay a monthly co-pay according to our income(my fiance's) and that's all everything else is covered.

You could look into that!

the family plan for my or my husband's plan is like $350/month

My employer covers half of my insurance, so I only end up paying about $300/month for the whole family, so yeah, if your employers aren't covering any of the costs, I would say that is about average. I have HealthPartners HMO with a very low deductible.

We used to pay $550 a month with Menards through Aetna it was horrible, and we had a $3000 deductible per person as well. It was an 80/20 plan!
He are in the middle of a career change and we now qualify for state health ($3,000 a month income limit in wisconsin) and it's not the greatest so we have a supplement through AmeriPlan USA. It's $10 a week for our entire family! It's a dicount plan that gives you savings up to 80% off everything health/medical related! instead of paying $1300 for a crown I only paid $550! It's a very cheap way to supplement when you don't have great coverage or enough coverage! it's accepted everywhere in the USA also. I know there are places in the twin cities, because I went there once and checked to make sure there were providers in case anything happened.

The website is EveryoneBenefits.com/Beaumont If you want to see the plans for yourself. You can also call me to find out exactly how I save with my card.
###-###-#### (milwaukee, WI)

Wow, I guess I didn't realize how good my benefits are. We pay for just health insurance (which includes dental exams, not work) $91/paycheck so typically 180/month unless it's a 3 paycheck month. We have Blue Cross Blue Shield with no deductible, but I am a federal employee, so you have to realize how many employees are in the group. We have one son, but the rate stays the same whether or not we have more children. In fact, it's the same as it was before we had him.

That does sound a little high, but obviously not as high as it goes. I paid around 450 for myself and my husband as family coverage. But we actually had relatively good insurance. That ended last October when I quit to become a SAHM. He is covered by his employer for $80 single coverage. To add me and my son it would have been an additional $300. So, we (my son and I) got Medica Direct HSA for Individuals. My deductible is $3500/$7000, 100% coverage after that, first $300 in preventative care is covered and my premium is $167 and change. I also qualified for the Allina Partners Care program- they help pay off the medical bills as well. You could check into your doctor's office and see if they have something like that as well. You can check out Medica online. I don't recommend going through an online service-I had a bad experience with getting poor insurance because they didn't explain it very well (Assurant-yuck!). Otherwise, I would be willing to give you contact info for my insurance agent. She was helpful without being pushy and gave me a spreadsheet with all the options (HSA vs regular, etc) and I asked questions. It worked great. One thing to know that may have helped me to know sooner when choosing my insurance- Minnesota mandates that all well baby care is covered 100% until at least the age of two (not sure if that will help you or not.) My coverage isn't as good as it was when I was employed (I didn't know how good I had it!) but it's working for us so far.

I used to work for a health insurance company. We had coverage for husband/wife and then there was a "family" plan.

Just because you have a large family, doesn't mean you will use your insurance more and because your family is small; doesn't mean you use your insurance less. If you have alot of claims then, your premiums will go up.

The rates that you quoted are very good. I know a family that has to get there own insurance and it is well over a $1,000 a month! Just remember your rates with your employer, are usually alot lower than getting insurance on your own. The rates for employers are based on health risks and the number being insured.

We pay $776 a month. We are both self-employed and have 2 small children. There are a LOT of riders (very few things are covered).

Through my husband's work, he has excellent benefits! We have 2 adults and 1 child on the policy
Dental $32.00 per month
Medical $382.00 per month
Life & LT disability $82.00 per month

I think we would have to pay more to add another kid on the policy.

We pay $271 a month in medical and $40 for dental, and I think vision is $2 a month.
My husband works for an enormous company though. We have great low co-pays, too. $15 for regular visits and urgent care, $50 for ER, and 80/20 on things like MRI's. Having a baby costs me $100 total.
I am so extremely thankful for our insurance. We have a large family and I couldn't even imagine having to more than double our cost and still have a large deductible.

Hi,

I was paying for coverage until they merged and I lost my job and I was paying about $160 for full family coverage. It was the lower of the two plans. I went in to the doctor for things and had to pay a $20 co-pay and on top of that they'd only cover $10 of a $151 bill. Needless to say, it took several months to pay off my $600 healthcare bill. I never heard of co-insurance deductable. It was never like this int he past. Healthcare coverage just sucks. It's not worth going to see a doctor and that's sad. I always call the nurse if my kids have a cold to see what's been going around there and if it's treatable with antibiotics I'll bring them in. Ug.

A couple years ago I worked in the health insurance industry (with an agent) in Des Moines, but the clients were all over Iowa. Family coverage (3 + persons) average was about 5-600 - so your rates are good. One thing to consider (if you children are healthy) is the change them to individual plans. The group rates for employee + spouse are usually a lot cheaper than the family rate. I have my kids on their own individual insurance plan and that's about 200 / month for 2 kids (rates are different for different deductibles - and it is coinsurance [percentage of the total cost you pay] rather than copays[set amount]) .... and our insurance is about 200 for us... saves us 1-200 a month which adds up!

IF you want to go that rout I can help you find an agent... can probably try your local state farm and if they don't have someone there they should be able to forward you to someone. Otherwise I use www.benefitssourceinc.com - Benefits Source Inc. The agent for the individual coverage is Gail Hilsabeck, and she is wonderful - you can go to her with questions instead of the insurance carrier or the health provider.

M.