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Comment by robinh | Hacker News Reader

I'm not in the USA, but 'only $950-1300'? That's more or less what I pay for a whole year of health insurance in the NL. How much does insurance cost in the USA?

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Unless you have low income, you pay more than that in the Netherlands.

Payment for health care is composed of two parts:

You pay about EUR 867 to 1,140 directly to an insurance company PER ADULT depending on how much you want to pay yourself in case of required care.

Then there's the socialized income dependent part of the insurance that's either payed via your employer or by yourself, which, in the latter case, is 5,65% over up to EUR ~51 K.

A family of two, each with an income > 51K then pays between EUR 7,480 to 8,026 (atm USD ~10K) each year for health insurance, subsidizing insurance for lower income groups.

Here is an example rate sheet for where I live (Northern NJ):

http://www.horizon-bcbsnj.com/SiteGen/Uploads/Public/horizon...

$200/mo per kid. $350/mo for wife. $600 for wife and unlimited kids.

And for the record: that's what qualifies as "incredibly inexpensive" in the US. Many people pay well over $1000/mo for family care, not counting what their employer contributes.

These costs are roughly what I'm faced with as well. I have insurance on myself but my kid is uninsured because I can't bring myself to pay so much per month when my child is only at the doctor 2-3 times a year and the cost is probably around $180 for a whole year, or less than the cost of a single month of insurance which I'd still be paying a copay on.

when I left my last job, I had the option to continue the health insurance the company was paying for, for up to a year (this rule is called "COBRA"). It costs me about $1100 per month, to cover two people.

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