re: Question for older(ish) folks on here: what was standard health insurance like decades ago

As the kid of an Exxon employee…When any of us got sick, we went to Stanacola and paid a $5 copay and got treatment. I think that place pretty much had all the specialties

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And you worked with doctors, not hospitals specializing on profits.

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You get that doctors choose to affiliate themselves with major health orgs (hospitals, etc), right?

Memorial Hermann is a non profit, but they charge 10x for imaging what you can get on the street, because who is going to pay for the illegals, deadbeats and this shite:

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For more than 114 years, our focus has been the best interest of our community, contributing more than $474 million annually through school-based health centers and other community benefit programs.

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First kid, before Obama care took full effect cost me less than $500. Second kid, more than 10x that out of pocket. I went from a close to zero deductible to being "helped" onto a high deductible plan with the same company. Thanks, fricktards.

We had a taste of that bullshite with Tricare's introduction for military in the 90s, and it sucked. And the American voters wanted a black president so bad, they all screamed, "hold my beer, reeeee!"

Defensive medicine of the past 30 years has contributed to the upward spiral of healthcare costs.

Everyone demands Cadillac healthcare.

Also, as a point of reference, the entire cost for a three day hospital stay and a normal delivery at a for-profit hospital for my first kid was $1,300-ish in 1988.

That was all doc fees included.

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Defensive medicine of the past 30 years has contributed to the upward spiral of healthcare costs

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Before he retired over a decade ago, my dad said the same. For example, he said you'd have a chronic smoker, terminally ill lung cancer patient in ICU. Docs would have to order a chest xray every day or every other day because they were afraid some lawyer would ask them, "Why did you stop doing chest xrays?"

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Docs would have to order a chest xray every day or every other day because they were afraid some lawyer would ask them, "Why did you stop doing chest xrays?"

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so the patient dies of radiation exposure instead of lung cancer, sign me up!

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I’m 66 and my first plan was just like they are now. You’re going to have to find some people 80+ that might have experienced something different. It’s more expensive today, but so is everything else. You could buy a decent house for $20K in the 50’s.

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I’m very fortunate to have had great coverage for my entire adult life, I hear some horror stories from people who don’t have great coverage

Before the ACA, there was a $5MM lifetime cap on payouts as a standard part of any policy. Your expensive stem cell + chemo treatment could be halted unless you could pony up the dough.

Before the ACA, job loss could be catastrophic if you had a chronic condition that required expensive treatments. You’d be left to fend for yourself because your insurance could drop you and you’d be blackballed by others for having a pre-existing condition.

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Because the true cost of medical events is largely unknown to the recipient -- because it is paid for by a 3rd party -- there is no market pressure to keep costs down. If the insurance company (or gov't) allows a doctor to charge "X" for some event, then "X" it will be.

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I’ve been preaching this for years. There is no accountability because it’s nobody’s money. If it were paid out of pocket, people would scream about costs because it’s their own money.

I had a minor surgery with a hospital stay recently. The bill to the insurance company for the surgery was about $179000. The insurance negotiated that down to $34000, a $145000 “discount”. What’s the true cost? What would I have paid without insurance?

If you were young and healthy, you could get a catastrophic plan for like $30/mo.

Not sure if that's true anymore but I remember when Obama care went into effect, those plans vanished overnight.