$635.00 out of pocket a month to cover myself, my wife and 1 child... and that is after the employer chips in the 80% they cover on me...
My wife and I rarely use it... Probably should
My twins mom used to run to the emergency room for everything... Hell, when my son was 10, he got a splinter under his fingernail... I wasn't home and she decided that it was an emergency, so she took him to the emergency room... They actually treated him for it instead of turning him away, then they sent me the bill....
We ended up in court over it with my lawyer reading them the state laws on emergency room care... The hospital stated that they could not legally turn her away and since I was the one who's insurance it was, that I had to pay the $450.00 bill... My lawyer won.. State law here says that I was responsible for all "reasonable and necessary care", State law also says that a "hospital cannot turn a patient away in an emergency". Emergency is defined somewhere in the statutes as "Life threatening". We proved that $450.00 to remove a splinter was not "reasonable" and that doing it in the emergency room was not "necessary" and that state law did not require them to treat the splinter because it was not "life threatening"...
I wanted the judge to order my son's mom to pay the bill and all of my legal and the hospitals legal... He wouldn't do it... Hospital had to pay my legal, remove me from being the responsible party on the bill and put her in there as the responsible party....
Anyway, this little diatribe was just to illustrate how the medical costs get higher. Hospitals DO NOT have to treat everyone that comes into the emergency room... In my state at least, they can turn them away if it is not life threatening... Unfortunately, most are afraid to do this and end up passing the costs on to everyone else and then blaming the laws....