I don't have a clue whats in it but I guarantee it would do shit to help me in the next 6 months when I could really use it.
I think I mentioned in another thread that my organization up and dropped our traditional HMO/PPO plans 2 weeks ago and forced us into a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) -- ordinarily, I think HRA and HSAs are a great option and if everyone used them it would help solve a lot of problems... unfortunately, the timing for my pregnant wife and I couldn't be worse! we're all-but fucked.
In addition to the $230/mo premium we'll now have to pay a $2,000 deductible BEFORE the insurance pays for anything else... which means every ultrasound, doctor appointment and prescription we have for the next few months we're supposed to pay for 100% out of pocket until we hit $2k.
Save us Obama!
I don't have $2,000 lying around so we'll see how well this works out.
Our company offered an HMO and a PPO, with the PPO requiring more expensive contributions from the employees. Since the HMO isn't available in the area where our office is located, the company would pay the difference, we got the PPO for the HMO price. So this year they decided not to do that any more, and instead offer a high deductible plan like the one you're talking about for the price of the HMO.
So all of us in our office took a look and we all decided that the PPO with the (much) higher contributions was still better overall than the high-deductible plan. Doh! That means nearly $1500 more per year in contributions to keep the same plan we've had. (Although we are switching insurance companies because 2009's company raised premiums 25%, so maybe that's not too bad.)
Anyhoo, the only person in the office that was close to using the high-deductible plan was the guy whose wife is pregnant. Turns out that from the taxes you save using the HRA and the fact that everything is paid for after the $2000 deductible (plus the $1500 in lower contributions for us) that it would just about come out even depending on how often the dad or first kid used it. As axon said, having a kid will cost $2K or more (it did for both of ours) when you have insurance anyway, so unless you don't use the doctor at all I'd say that you might be a prime candidate for benefiting from the plan.
Of course, you still have to pay for the stuff at the time, and if you live paycheck to paycheck that might be hard. But if they take money out of your paycheck for the HRA that should help, no?
By the way, I, too, thought the idea of these types of plans sounded really good, but I have to admit that when not a single person in my office thought it was a better choice it made me wonder. I mean, if nobody wants to use that type of plan, is it really a good idea?