Mrs.PatsFanInVa

But we do....can you imagine the additional cost to you if we didn't?

Patriot_in_NY

1) No because if your coverage views you as a "single economic entity", then by default, you could want be exempt from that coverage, given the fact that one of you would require (or want those services). If you were a single male, then yeah.......... it's a waste of your money.

2) Yes

3) See #1.

BelichickFan

You aren't nearly as important as you think you are, those of us with kids wouldn't see a significant rise in medical costs if you weren't forced to pay.

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

You keep right on thinking that.

Look up what an individual policy costs - then see what the corresponding family policy costs for the same amount of coverage.

Then take the number of children you have, add your spouse and yourself and multiply that number by the individual plan cost.

That's what you'd be paying if it weren't for the fact that "families" are currently charged at the same rate regardless of if it's just you and your spouse or you, your spouse and 4 kids.

Whatever it's going to save me as a married with no children policy holder it's going to multiply respectively in cost added on for those who do have children.

BelichickFan

It wouldn't go up a lot, most families with private insurance have at least 1 kid on the policy.

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Ya know what, I'll save you the trouble, I'll do the math for you.

Bc/BS offers a standard health care policy which costs $1,825 to the employee per year. The cost of the same coverage in a family plan is $4,279.00

The only fair way to break down cost per family member covered would be to charge individual rates for each individual which would mean that I, as a maried without children consumer would save $629.00 a year if we didn't get lumped into the "family" catagory.

It would also mean that someone with a spouse and two children would see their premium increase from $4,279.00 a year to $7,300.00 a year - and if he had 3 children it would increase to $9,125.00. Each additional child would raise his contribution another $1,825.00.

None of this even takes into consideration what the employer would be paying in additional costs - which he'd probably pass onto you.

Don't ever think that other people don't pay for your children - they do. I'd try to remember that each time you whine and moan about the possibility that you might somehow get hoodwinked into paying for someone else's child's medical care under some health care reform plan.

As long as you are covered under some sort of Group Healthcare Plan other people are sharing your costs just as you're sharing theirs. Healthcare is something we're all in together whether you think of it in those terms or not - maybe you think you're getting along just fine without the "them" but you tend to forget that maybe you wouldn't get along quite so fine without the "us."

BelichickFan

No it wouldn't. You need to take the total number of people covered now, eliminate those with no kids then do the math and the numbers won't come close to what you're suggesting.

There's a reason, using your numbers, it's $1,800 for an individual and $4,300 for a family. Two individuals (you and your husband) would be $3,600, there's not a lot extra because kids don't cost much in covered health care. Most of my kids' health care is dental and orthodontic which aren't covered. There's rare illnesses, occasional broken bones and shots but not a lot of big ticket items like cancer, pregnancy, stroke and heart attack.

PatsFanInVa

Nothing to do w/the unwritten (and heretofore never-cited) board rule, dude, everything to do w/the way you're going about things. You want to define the conversation not as the "types of conversation" below, but as spewing without thinking... I'm not talking about thinking about what you'll say next, I'm talking about thinking what you say from the get-go.

So you spout out a point of view, and it turns out to be demonstrably wrong...

I'm pretty sure nobody has an "unwritten rule" that you aren't allowed to be wrong, PR, but there's also no "unwritten rule" that you have to be right.

As to the missus, I'm pretty sure you've noted in the course of your self-imposed humiliation that she's quite capable of taking care of herself, though you've risen to the level of rude from time to time, in my eyes. I certainly wouldn't bother to come on here and say "stop being an a-hole" to you... or for that matter, to her. It looks to me like you've done a fine job of defending her to the objective observer by the paucity of your arguments with her.

Me, I'm spending way more time on GLB these days than patsfans politics.

As you were

PFnV

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

That figure (which I presume you pulled out of your hat or some more attached part of your anatomy) doesn't compute with the fact that married couples with children now make up barely over 25% of all households in the United States.

Fewer Americans married with children - Census Bureau statistics show that married people with children account for 25% of American households | USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education) | Find Articles at BNET

Try again.

BelichickFan

I think it's kind of cute - you know we're part of their pillow talk