Show HN: I made a graph to help determine which health insurance is cheapest.

Show HN: I made a graph to help determine which health insurance is cheapest.(nonegames.net)

3 points by noneTheHacker 13 years ago | 4 comments

I made it for myself but I thought others might be interested in seeing it as well. If anyone has any feedback (other than site design :)), let me know. I tried running this by as many people as I could before posting it here to try to see if my thought process in picking insurance made sense.

phamilton 13 years ago |

The key to understanding this is that it is missing time as a variable. With Premier 10, you will never have to shell out more than $3000 at once. With Solution 2500, you may have to shell out $5000 at once. The other costs are spread evenly throughout the 26 payments.

noneTheHacker 13 years ago | |

That is true but even if you have to shell out $5000 up front once, you are still paying $2000 less by the end of the year. So it's like your risk is $2000 greater but you save it by the end of the year, even if that risk was actualized.

Also, it's important to look yearly rather than just as separate events because the out of pocket max resets yearly rather than per event.

noneTheHacker 13 years ago | | |

Thinking in more detail about it, Because I am starting insurance halfway through the year, I will actually have around 13 pay periods rather than 26. So that shows the chart in a different light as well. Solution 2500 isn't the clear winner at 13 pay periods that it was at 26.