#6Not Calculating Yearly Costs
The next mistake that a lot of people make is looking at the monthly cost of the health plan instead of looking at the overall yearly cost. This sometimes can bring to light things you didn’t notice when you’re just looking at the monthly cost. For example on our current plan options, I added up the premiums for the whole year on the low deductible plan versus the medium deductible plan and I realized that the low deductible plan was so expensive that it never made sense to choose that regardless of what kind of medical expenses you would have.
I’m not saying yours is going to have something like this but just add up the yearly cost and see what difference it’s going to make in the long run. It might show you something different about the plans.
#5Ignoring The psychology
The next mistake is not understanding the difference between a co-pay and co-insurance. A co-pay is a flat rate that you pay for a doctor’s visit or medical service. For example you might have a $20 copay to visit your primary care doctor. A co-insurance is a percentage that you pay so you might have a 20% coinsurance for a doctor’s visit. At first glance, it might seem like co-pays are a better deal than a co-insurance but that’s not always true.
Again, you’re talking about a percentage of that insurance rate, which is lower than you think a lot of times. For example, one plan I had had a $60 copay for visiting specialist doctors but that included quick follow-up visits with my son’s ENT and the receptionist told me that my copay was actually almost the full price of the visit because a quick follow-up visit only cost about sixty dollars, so if I’d had a twenty percent copay, it would have only cost twelve dollars instead of my sixty dollar copay, so just think about which one is going to be a better deal for you.
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