Re: more on medical

I agree that seems like a low number.  Just my medical insurance premiums
are 5k; add the half that my employer pays and we're already at 10k.  Add
dr. visits, and if we'd like to include dental as medical, teeth cleaning
and repair, prescriptions are a whole nother big cost, throw in an
accident...  and just my household is way over that estimate.

Now, people without insurance may be paying more or less depending on
circumstances, and we've had years when our only costs were the insurance
premiums, so maybe it does average out to 10k.

whew.

Libby
MD zone 6


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "james singer" <jsinger@igc.org>
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 5:22 PM
Subject: Re: [CHAT] more on medical


> I'm guessing that that $10,000 number includes a lot of things we don't
> normally think of when we think about health-care costs--such as
> medicaid and various disability related programs. Many of these people
> are "sick" by definition and quite costly to maintain [nursing homes,
> dialysis units, and similar]. If you take all those costs, add all
> public and private health insurance premiums and co-payments and
> institutional stuff [like Indian, VA, and military hospitals, and
> farmworker clinics], and the uninsured prescription costs, and divide
> that total by however many of us there are, I'd be surprised it's only
> $10 grand.
>
>
> On Friday, February 6, 2004, at 12:09 PM, Bonnie Holmes wrote:
>
> > A lot on health and medical costs recently in the news...wonder why
> > women are eating so much more...one thing mentioned in the article was
> > sodas...maybe we drank more black coffee and tea earlier.
> >
> > From 1971 to 2000, the study found, women increased their caloric
> > intake
> > by 22 percent, men by 7 percent...The study, conducted by the Centers
> > for Disease Control and Prevention and reported in the current edition
> > of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found that in 1971 women
> > ate 1,542 calories on average, compared with today's 1,877, while men
> > went from 2,450 calories a day to 2,618. Those numbers dwarf the
> > government's recommendations of 1,600 calories a day for women and
> > 2,200
> > for men.
> >
> > This from a CBS Financial newsletter: "Health-care costs for the
> > average
> > family are set to top $10,000 next year, Thorpe said, with households
> > paying an increasing share. Meanwhile, the number of uninsured has
> > edged
> > up, to 43.6 million in 2002". I can't image the average cost being this
> > high. We had unusual costs last year with my husband being in the
> > hospital for three weeks and needing all sorts of tests but I am hoping
> > that we don't top $1,000 this year.
> >
> >
> > Bonnie Zone 6+ ETN

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