About $100,000 per signaling hormone
The medication required for me to function in a relatively normal capacity costs over $2,000 a month. As my pituitary failure extends to other hormones that cost will rise.
Assuming 75 is the age for public medical assistance by the time I get there, I’ve got 31 years to pay this on my own or through insurance.
24,000 a year at 4% for 31 years yields a net present value of about $500K.
Put another way, no new insurance company will touch me – at least for that existing condition. The one I have pays up but probably can’t wait to dump me.
This puts a funny wrinkle on many things. For instance, if I sell my company and am no longer an covered by the very generous health plan, my cut of the sale is worth $500K less than it normally would be. Also, even as a millionaire the amount of money at stake makes it quite likely I’ll always work somewhere that has a group health plan I can hide in. I could be the millionaire clerk at Barnes & Noble – basically working for the health plan. Or, in painful irony, I could be that local state bureaucrat telling you “NO” all so I can join YOUR risk pool.
Basically the next 30 years for me will revolve around grubbing for other people to help pay my health care.
Not very libertarian! But accidents happen (even in your own kitchen) and the system is the system, so I have to operate with its incentives and disincentives in mind.
Wish me luck keeping insured! Oh… and please don’t take away drug company profit incentives. I need them to keep innovating.
Update: By chance my supplying pharmacy called me at lunch today. Turn’s out I’m closer to $4K a month – making me almost a million dollar man!
January 12th, 2009 at 11:45 am
The federal government expects a lot of retirements in the next decade and was having trouble recruiting the best and brightest in a booming economy. The salaries are decent (excessive, say some), the benefits and job security excellent (including FEHB with no pre-condition clause), and a defined contribution retirement plan (with guaranteed subsidized health coverage) with employer contribution. Unfortunately, the best jobs are not in SW Utah and no, you cannot be your own boss in avery hierarchical organization. Remember, too, that the federal government cannot declare bankruptcy or go out of business. You also have to put up with a steady drumbeat of public carping about your employer. Of course, all that carping could in the extreme lead to treating government employees as a lump of labor, a mere commodity to be traded on the open markets.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
On second thought… I can swing $24K a year (-:
January 12th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Don’t feel bad for using at least $100,000 that I or my employer have paid in over the little I’ve used in 50 years, including the $7,000 per year as an unemployed or uncovered geezer for 5 years. Even now eye drops and tests run over $4,000 for the government to pay after my $1,200 Part B contribution. The DoD/Medicare cooperation did eliminate some overhead. Your expenses to stay living are worth paying to the guys collecting your taxes!
January 12th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
If this were of my own doing (through vice or bad habits) I’d feel somewhat bad. But this was an accident, in my own kitchen, and that is what insurance is for.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
We might note that if you had advocated for a large risk pool for health insurance, instead of small private companies cherry-picking the population for lowest risk, highest profit customers, you might have had continuous insurance without the need to start afresh with a new insurer every time you made an employment or other change. Free market sub-optimizing has its drawbacks.
Do you think that our current private insurance market is the best arrangement for the nation? Remember that insurance is more than just a word, it is also a profit-seeking market where profit comes first and medical care comes second.
Have you any good ideas on how to re-structure health insurance to include care for everyone as well as the rich who don’t need insurance? The new administration is looking for ideas that will work and will get through the political maze of frozen and self-serving thinking.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I advocate for a required large risk pool for catastrophic care and out of pocket or the insurance of their choice for other care.
The new administration is looking to take money from a minority to shower it on their voters. They aren’t looking for any solution other than that.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:10 am
A mandatory employee but not employer Section 125 graduated price/benefit medical insurance plan with a minimum coverage requirement by age group and sex. Payouts and claims administered by a large non-profit corporation housed in a rural location.
September 10th, 2010 at 10:38 am
[...] I was already very happy with our coverage, I didn’t appreciate an additional $8,000 dollars annually to cover whatever bones Obama threw to [...]