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birb_cromble  5d ago (text post)   1028 thread views

Qeekly Finance Thread - 2026-10-24

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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Apparently, the average cost of a health insurance plan for a family of four in the United States is now $28k. When I was shopping last year, unsubsidized Obamacare was in that price range. Gallingly, the plans still come with large deductibles that must be met before insurance pays for anything.

So we simply canceled our health plan. Now we're raw-dogging it and have saved probably $20k this year. Might join again for 2027 for anticipated maternity bills.

It feels good not to be subsidizing the bad life choices of others.

Remember how Obamacare originally fined people for not buying insurance because obviously people wouldn't pay outrageous rates to subsidize other people unless they were forced to? Well, there is no mandate anymore. Why are people still buying insurance?

There's also tail-end risk. A cancer diagnosis, serious injury, major chronic illness, pregnancy, etc can easily hit five or ten times the cost of that annual premium, and over a longer time frame the chances of something popping up gets bad enough to think about. The math's a lot harder to figure out now that most medical debt can't go to your credit score, but it's not a trivial thing, either.

yeah, but you can negotiate much lower if you pay cash or default on medical debts. so this changes the math materially .

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