Ask HN: What percentage of your salary are you paying to health insurance? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What percentage of your salary are you paying to health insurance?

24 pointssharemywin43 comments

I pay 17.6% of my salary to health insurance. And that doesn't include my employers portion. Are there any start ups with solutions? Am I the only one?

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We really cannot compare until we all give 4 sets of numbers:

1. Amount your pay is docked for health premium;

2. amount your employer pays for your share;

3. total family deductible before insurance pay; and

4. the percentage that your insurer will pay after hitting deductible.

Any thing short of that makes for poor comparative.

~1%. Not including employer's portion. Small non-startup company in NYC. High deductible plan via TriNet.

Last place (small startup) was 0%. For the PPO. Smaller startup. Also TriNet.

Maybe the employment market for engineers is tighter in NY than SF? Or the competition includes more traditional companies that are accustomed to fully covering insurance? Or more company founders/execs, instead of being fresh out of college, are older and have families and want their own insurance covered?

Or I'm a cheapskate and choose the cheap plan?

There is no "employer's portion". It's all your portion!

Part of the money you earn gets redirected (tax-free) to the healthcare industry.

Yes and no. I'm not getting that money either way, whether my employer decides to spend it on my health insurance or not.

Regardless, the OP was discussing percent excluding the portion the employer covers.

I'm not particularly interested in any particular discussion of why and how the American health insurance industry is a clusterfuck. We all already know that and the points would take all day to enumerate anyway.

People who think you are paying such a low amount -- you're not. Your employer is paying it for you. That would have gone to salary instead. Check your W-2.

Is that like saying that payroll taxes that your employer pays would go into your salary instead too?

Depending on the relative elasticity of supply v demand, yeah.

In the US I suppose?

I'm also not part of the health exchange. And my deductible is 2.9% of my salary. So, before the insurance company pays in 1 cent I'm expected to pay 20% of my salary to insurance. Something doesn't seem right about that. People are on here are looking for problems to solve. Well, here's one that needs a disruptive solution.

I don't understand. My deductible is also around 3% of my salary. But my insurance company pays in a lot before I hit that point. Appointments, lab work, etc. are all partially covered, typically with a copay. GP costs me $20, specialist costs me $30, x-rays cost around $50-200 depending on the number and kind (and that's just the highest I've seen, I'm sure it can go higher). But my health insurer (BCBS) pays at least that much for each of those.

I'd look for a new policy. I once was offered a terrible policy by a contracting agency I worked for. It would've cost me around $10k/year, out of pocket with BCBS was around $2k/year and offered much better benefits (I was around 25 at the time, ACA may have changed that baseline cost).

And to answer your question, I presently pay around 3.3% of my salary for medical, dental, vision coverage (3 separate policies, vision is almost free at ~$120/year, but I have terrible eyesight so the cost is worth it for me).

I also have a family of 4. I fall into the worst possible category for subsidizing. I make just over median income for salary. My employer is a small business with lot of older workers. I have a family size of 4 which puts my in the family category but juts barely. I don't use a lot of medical in the first place.

Very different circumstances than yours, I see. I don't know what would happen to my costs in the same situation, though I do know they'd go up quite a bit.

I still stand by my other point, your insurance should be paying something before you hit your deductible. If it's not, you need a new plan.

I work at a startup in SF. I get reimbursed 100% for my health insurance costs, which includes dental and vision insurance as well. It's about $550 a month, or $6600 a year.

We would have a company plan, but we're small enough as to where it's more cost effective to reimburse everyone.

Like most people in Germany I pay 7.3% + 0.2% supplemental. I decided against private insurance due to the recent massive premium hikes, even though right now it would be cheaper for me. (It's hard to get out of private insurance and back into statutory insurance)

The rate is probably 15% with the employer paying the other half. The big German public health insurance companies compete with each other but have to offer a base catalogue of services so they're quite similar after all and the rate difference is 0.1, maybe 0.5% between them. It is capped at 6200 Euro gross, so the maximum amount you'd pay is 453 Euro/month (assuming 7.3% rate).

In the UK my national insurance contributions are about %8 but that does just go into the general tax pool and is not hypothecated to be spend on the NHS/health.

In California I'm paying 3.4% of my gross pay for a high-deductible health plan covering myself and my spouse.

EDIT: that's for health, vision, and dental.

Not sure how it would work out but I think there should be cap on premium plus out of pocket that's capped based on income. I think Obamacare expects premium to be capped at 7% until your each median income. To me something like 7%(premium) and 10%(total out of pocket) based on income for everyone would be reasonable.

I pay ~7.5% for myself and my spouse. We have four children covered by the state's expanded Medicaid provision. State and federal taxes and budgeting make it impossible to estimate not only how much I am paying for that portion, but how much anyone is paying for it... Probably not another 10 percentage points, though.

I pay around 4,5% in the Netherlands, with the smallest 'own risk'. I don't know the English term for it, but if anything happens the first €350 in healthcare costs for the year are on me (excluding family doctor visits). I could choose to pay more for a lower monthly cost, but I don't.

Deductible, or out of pocket expense.

'own risk' based on your description would be called a deductible.

Living in Australia, private health insurance, 1% of gross income, ~$1,000 pa.

This is a the cheapest plan at the time that was offered by this provider (NIB) and I only did it so I didn't have to pay extra tax as part of the medicare levy surcharge.

I'm in the US and pay roughly 3.5% of my gross salary as my portion of the insurance premium. I opted for the cheaper HMO (Kaiser) insurance though. My employer pays the other 2/3rds of the premium. (I'm single, no kids)

In Canada? Roughly 15%, which doesn't include much (no dental, no vision, etc).

Seems high, that's what you're paying for private coverage? (I'm basing off my experience in Ontario, I know other provinces are bound to be different, Québec especially.) Or did you get that number by looking at your income taxes vs government spending on health care?

I pay under 2% pre-tax with another 2% exposed to the deductible. Employer covers around 80-90%. 401k + health insurance is pretty standard for devs. Sounds like you are paid under market and have meagre benefits.

In Poland, it's free (i.e. covered by your taxes) as long as you have a taxable income. If you don't pay any taxes, you can opt-in for around $90 a month.

if it's covered by your taxes, is it really free then?

No, but if the system is run more efficiently, it can be cheaper.

Americans pay more in taxes for heath coverage (combined) than anyone else...

What percentage of your income is deducted for health benefits? Is there additional private coverage available like in Canada, where citizens can opt to purchase supplemental coverage or opt for perks like private hospital rooms, etc?

Here in Uruguay I think its about 7,5% for the unified healthcare system, called FONASA

Then you affiliate to the health society you want(many privates and a public one)

Zero. My employer pays 100%. Yes, they are awesome!

No! You pay 100%! You are awesome!

zero. I personally have yet to find a healthcare provider with a profit (or lack thereof) model that is sufficiently differentiable from rigged gambling such that I can in good conscience do business with them. in the meantime I build and maintain a savings account for medical expenses and also pay the Obamacare penalty.

Did you have a choice to the type of health insurance that you can choose from? 17.6% is ridiculously high by any standards.

Sweden, roughly 10.5% of gross. County council tax (out of which 76% goes to healthcare) and private insurance.

OP, you should have requested people put their country in the comment.

I pay 1%, though most people here pay 0% other than their income tax.

8.4%, my portion, NYC, for my wife and I.

Almost 10%, for myself and a child.

of my gross salary? <1%

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