I had a girlfriend like that once...

OMG that is total bull crap. $656? My company spent $17,000 on my crap health care plan last year, and I havent even been to the doctor in two years. It's an outrageous scam. I may as well just smash my keyboard and bill THAT as a health care expense. That's $35k in 2 years that should have just gone to me, or at least to our profit sharing plan. And its even more outrageous that any agency can possibly come up with such an absurd number. They may as well just make the number negative and claim that unicorns poop health care plans that pay you.

Obama Care Baby!

I wish that I only spent $656/month on health insurance.

Of course, the CPI would show enormous inflation over the years if this item actually reflected health insurance expenditures. Can't have that now, can we?

Month? Uh, that's an ANNUAL claim in the CPI tables.

Well, it's going to immediately go to $2k/year/person as that's the baseline created by the health insurance penalty.

..."What's worse is that the BLS claims that only 0.656% of your household expense profile is comprised of health insurance."

Everyone on social security pays $99 a month just for their 'part B' premium. That's $1200 a year right there. What a joke.

This forum presents a skewed data set. There are an awful lot of people paying exactly $0. The dumb smucks on this board get to pay for everbody elses healthcare through cost shifting.

I agree it is unusual but it is not totally out of the ordinary.

I make more than $100k and I am single and I am my own household.

My employer deducts $20 from every bi-weekly paycheck for health insurance. I pay $520 a year on health insurance.

But of course my employer covers the other 90% of the cost.

If I had a wife + kids, I'd be paying $40 each paycheck.

CPI looks like vix flat and dead. when is wizard of oz exposed behind the curtain.

eye of hurricane Ben

I think that figure needs a little more context myself. Insurance is a subcategrory to Medical Care Services. Heres the data set for that master category

Medical care services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.426 3.7 0.2 0.0 0.3 0.3
Professional services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.000 1.9 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2
Physicians’ services8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.613 2.0 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.0
Dental services8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.763 2.8 0.5 0.3 0.3 0.5
Eyeglasses and eye care6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.248 0.3 -0.1 0.0 -0.1 -0.1
Services by other medical professionals1 , 8 , 6 . . . . 0.375 0.8 0.0 0.1 -0.1 0.0
Hospital and related services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.770 4.6 0.3 0.1 0.5 0.8
Hospital services8 , 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.547 4.9 0.4 0.1 0.5 0.9
Inpatient hospital services8 , 14 , 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 0.3 -0.2 0.4 0.8
Outpatient hospital services8 , 3 , 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 0.4 0.2 0.8 0.8
Nursing homes and adult day services8 , 14 . . . . . . . . 0.137 3.6 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.2
Care of invalids and elderly at home1 , 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.085 0.9 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0
Health insurance1 , 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.656 9.9 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.0

So you see Medical Care Services as a total category is a 5.46. I take that to mean people are spending on healthcare, but not everyone has health insurance, (based on how the money being reported is actually spent). My $.02

As a young, healthy, single person with individual, self-paid coverage, my premiums are $170/month for a very high-deductible plan that is essentially catastrophic-only.

Hstella wrote..

. . . a very high-deductible plan that is essentially catastrophic-only.

Didn't Obamacare make those plans illegal? Or is it just that all of the Obamacare provisions have not yet kicked in?

Hstella wrote..

As a young, healthy, single person with individual, self-paid coverage, my premiums are $170/month for a very high-deductible plan that is essentially catastrophic-only.

Sorry, you aren't paying your fair share to old farts like me. And would you please bring along a couple dozen doughnuts along when you come over to fork over your cash? TIA.

Lugnut, I'm not sure what to make of the table you posted.

"Medical Care Services" = 5.426 (percent of the "household expense profile")
The next three lines, i.e. "Professional Services", Physician Services", "Dental Services" sum to 5.376 -- not quite a match, although one might expect that they would be three subcategories of "Medical Care Services".

Then there are 4 flavors of "hospital services", whose numbers don't appear to demonstrate that any are subsets of any others. But the really ugly are the pair

Inpatient hospital services = 4.2
Outpatient hospital services = 5.5
.... note that this last is larger than the top-line "Medical Care Services"! So how could "outpatient" be a subset of "medical care"?

Oh, yeah, and "inpatient" and "outpatient" should be DISJOINT sets (presumably a given item can't be both)... so they sum to 9.7% of your "household expense profile"!?!


If that's true, then perhaps it's an average in which 9 households are like the M.Tullius one, with pretty much nothing to report... and the tenth is in bankruptcy court due to the hospital bills.
[****fan]

Tully

@ Marcustullius

If you look at the chart in the link (search for 'health' in the pdf) you can see the ident for the various subsections. 5.426 is the sum of Professional Srvcs (3.00), Hospital and related services (1.770) and Health Insurance (.656)

Ah. Missed the link.... and stupidly assumed that they'd break it out in a form like

A.total
A.1
A.2
B.total

instead of something like

A.total
B.something
B.something else
C.something
A.1
B.more-crap
D.something
A.2

I'm sure it all makes sense... to those inside the beast.

Tully

A lot of sub-totals inside that report; you have to learn how to read it.... it's a bit tricky.