Hello, Russ: I am from Minnesota. The health care/health insurance debacle is a rather interesting one for me to keep looking at. About a year ago, I was ranting on the high cost of insurance to a social media friend of mine from Washington state. She went up to the point of telling me I was feeding her lies about the cost here in Minnesota. It prompted me to dig into it a bit further. I priced individual health insurance on the BCBS website for Minnesota for coverage in Western Minnesota. The premiums for my family of 4 totaled up to around $22,000 with a $6550 deductible, and our family was responsible for up to 2 deductibles, or $13,100. What I found to be equally interesting was the same plan, but in and around the Twin Cities Metro area to be around $15,000. These costs were without any subsidy. I have not done any pricing since last year, and we have my entire family covered in one group plan through an employer sponsored plan. It is essentially the same plan the individual plan was, but is a BCBS plan through work. I have been in and out of group plans since I first started working in the late 1980's, after college. I have seen premiums drop just once. I have seen premiums double twice. I have seen premiums remain flat twice. The rest of the time, I have seen premiums increase always in double digit percentages. The last time I tracked them over a 7 or 8 year period, the average annual premium increased amounted to 12 or 13 percent. I have also seen deductibles increase, as lower deductible plans were "phased out" by the insurance company. In closing, I remember reading an article on Yahoo news a year or two ago, where the writer interviewed people from 4 or 5 different countries. What was astounding, was all those interviewed talked about healthcare and/or health insurance coverage costing them "nothing," and they were sincere in their responses. I may not be the sharpest knife in a drawer, but there is no such thing as a "free ride." In these various nations, health care is paid for through some form of taxation, therefore it is truly NOT FREE. I don't have an answer for our situation here, but the hefty increases in costs cannot be sustained, especially for small employers and the self employed. In those firms where health insurance is a fringe benefit, the employer is having to pass on more and more of the cost to the employees, which ultimately will result in eating into the take home pay of workers.
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