Emergency rooms and Supplemental Insurance
I am switching to a small employer who will give me 20k a year with which to buy insurance.
Family of four: wife, 5 y/o, baby. We are healthy. Not a big emergency fund (maybe 10k).
Despite being healthy, our kids go to the doctors a lot. Check ups, etc. Current insurance has a modest, $30 copay for such visits and it doesn't bother me. Every year or so, our kid does something profoundly foolish and we end up in the ER. Its cheap because my current insurance is with the county and it covers everything at the visit for like $200 out of pocket.
Looking at the plans: none of them cover ER visits totally. Not even the gold. They all do x % of coinsurance, which, from reading the primer post, is bad because it means i'm fully liable up to my deductible or out of pocket max.
Broker I am working with found us a good plan that suits our needs (we get to keep our pediatrician; $0 copay for doctors visits and urgent care) but then there is that 50% coinsurance for ER visits and it freaks me out.
So she pitches supplemental insurance. AccidentWise. We can afford it. Pays us 1200 each time we go to the ER.
Ok, but what if, at the ER, we need, say, an x-ray, a minor surgery for a cut, a cast for a broken bone, then what? Am I just fully liable up to the point of my deductible (which, by the way, is like 7.5k)?
More broadly, does this generally sound like a suitable insurance plan for my situtation?
(Any advice is dearly appreciated, the stress of this decision is enormous. I have to leave the county to earn more money to provide for my family, but I must lose the awesome insurance I have enjoyed for so long)
submitted by /u/tautaestin
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