• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Let’s finish the job.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

I was promised a recession.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Bark louder, little dog.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

This really is a full service blog.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / An extra $100 deductible does not buy much

An extra $100 deductible does not buy much

by David Anderson|  June 25, 20187:05 am| 6 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance

FacebookTweetEmail

I was curious. What does $100 more in deductible buy in terms of actuarial value?

It depends but the short answer is not much.

The graph below shows how much a $100 increase in deductible buys in terms of actuarial value. I used the 2019 CMS AV calculator with the Bronze tables. Deductible is combined and embedded with no other cost sharing. This is a bare bones plan.

This is because health care costs are so skewed to the right. Half of the population barely touches the system so the first $100 of deductible captures most of their health care spending and the first $500 of deductible is almost entirely their annual spend. The declining marginal purchase of AV per $100 spent on deductible is real and big.

By the time the deductible is going from $3,000 to $3,100, very few people are actually running up charges to that level. It buys half a point of actuarial value for this jump. By the time the last $100 is added to deductible for the skinniest plan possible with a $7,900 out of pocket maximum, the AV bought is .22 points.

The trade-off to buy an extra AV point at the tail end of the distribution is an extra $400 to $500 in deductible. This implies that a Copper plan with a 50% AV could probably see a $12,000 to $13,000 deductible.

My data is here again:

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « On the Road and In Your Backyard
Next Post: World Cup: The End Of Th Round Of 32 »

Reader Interactions

6Comments

  1. 1.

    dnfree

    June 25, 2018 at 10:54 am

    I am always appreciative of these posts that describe the complexity of health care financing behind the scenes. Thank you again.

  2. 2.

    Yarrow

    June 25, 2018 at 11:02 am

    The trade-off to buy an extra AV point at the tail end of the distribution is an extra $400 to $500 in deductible. This implies that a Copper plan with a 50% AV could probably see a $12,000 to $13,000 deductible.

    A $13,000 deductible is just insane. I guess people who buy that do it because either they are young and invincible or they simply can’t afford anything better?

  3. 3.

    mere mortal

    June 25, 2018 at 11:43 am

    So, is there a universe where an insurance plan could create a ‘donut’, such that the first 1,000 dollars of care are covered, then the next 6,000 are the deductible? Maybe for an extra fifty bucks a month premium or something?

    It seems that something like that would make the vast majority of health care non-consumers willing to visit a doctor before conditions become really serious, and give them assurance that unexpected cost-sharing bills don’t show up.

  4. 4.

    ProfDamatu

    June 25, 2018 at 2:12 pm

    I know this is slightly off-topic, but $7900 as the OOP max…just, wow. I really hope that adjusting that downward is on the radar of politicians. I understand why the stautorily allowed OOP max has increased, but we’re rapidly getting to the point where, for most people who purchase on the Exchanges, that OOP max is going to make the insurance worthless for keeping them out of bankruptcy should the meteor strike, to say nothing of being a potential death sentence for people with chronic conditions, who will hit their max every year. (And fewer and fewer plans, at least in my area, are offered at less than the maximum allowed.) I mean, at almost $8k, that OOP max is going to be at least a sixth of pre-tax income for those who qualify for subsidies, and that doesn’t even take into account their premiums, which will cost another 9.65%.

    I guess I’m just salty because although the OOP max keeps going up, my income hasn’t – and even if it had, I doubt it would have increased enough to offset the rise. Had my health crises occurred just a few years later than they did, I’d be in a substantially worse financial position than I am – I’d have been on the hook for over $7k each cancer year, instead of $2-3.5k.

  5. 5.

    David Anderson

    June 25, 2018 at 4:00 pm

    @mere mortal: There are plenty of plans like that where generic drugs and the first 3 or 5 PCP visits are free.

    @ProfDamatu: Yep, the mechanics are clean, the implications aren’t

  6. 6.

    mere mortal

    June 25, 2018 at 5:12 pm

    Thanks, Mr. Mayhew. Sorry that I missed the last Balloon Juice meet-up in the Triangle area.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • Another Scott on Open Thread (Anyone Up for a Balloon Juice Zoom on Saturday Evening?) (Mar 31, 2023 @ 5:52pm)
  • lowtechcyclist on Everything That’s Good – Mockery Goes So Well With Coffee, Ice Cream, Forever Potus, Biden and MVP (Mar 31, 2023 @ 5:51pm)
  • Mai Naem mobile on Everything That’s Good – Mockery Goes So Well With Coffee, Ice Cream, Forever Potus, Biden and MVP (Mar 31, 2023 @ 5:50pm)
  • Butter Emails on Everything That’s Good – Mockery Goes So Well With Coffee, Ice Cream, Forever Potus, Biden and MVP (Mar 31, 2023 @ 5:48pm)
  • lowtechcyclist on Everything That’s Good – Mockery Goes So Well With Coffee, Ice Cream, Forever Potus, Biden and MVP (Mar 31, 2023 @ 5:46pm)

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Seattle Meetup coming up on April 4!

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Classified Documents: A Primer
State & Local Elections Discussion

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!