Medical Insurance: PPO vs. HMO. Which is better?

[Happy Snowman]

Really? How much less than $332 a month would we pay for family coverage? We have a copay for Dr visits and prescriptions but everything else is covered 100%, I can't imagine a PPO would be less out of pocket. My self-employed friend who buys her family plan with a high deductible pays around $1300 a month.

Like I said, your employer is paying a LARGE portion of your premiums. If you had to pay the entire premium, you would be paying 3x's that probably. As for your friend, maybe she is paying that, but without knowing the rest of the details, hard to say, but $1300 is pretty average for a total premium nationally. You just don't see that because your employer is paying most of your premium. Then, for your friend, add in that she can write off most of her premiums and her contributions to her HSA and her net cost is very, very little.

 

[bcla]

Like I said, your employer is paying a LARGE portion of your premiums. If you had to pay the entire premium, you would be paying 3x's that probably. As for your friend, maybe she is paying that, but without knowing the rest of the details, hard to say, but $1300 is pretty average for a total premium nationally. You just don't see that because your employer is paying most of your premium. Then, for your friend, add in that she can write off most of her premiums and her contributions to her HSA and her net cost is very, very little.

You'll know what the "cost" is if you're ever on COBRA. In my case it was about $1300 for a family of three, although it got complicated we had a child during that stretch and because my former employer merged with another company that had a different plan. Then my wife insisted on an individual plan and not getting dental or vision. That was actually about $400 for two adults and almost another $400 for our child. Then we learned what the difference was when I had an ER visit.

However, I don't think any of this was self-insured. That gets interesting when it comes to COBRA.

 

[DisneyMommyMichelle]

I have a PPO and it's well worth it for our family. We have a son that needs to see specialists a lot (deaf in one ear) and then we travel a lot so are constantly out of network. We have gladly paid the extra for our family of 5 to have a PPO ever since we sstarted getting insurance together once married.