re: #560 lurking faith

I think the remark about “gaming the system” applied to people who opt out of the health care plan at work to save the money but then want to opt in as soon as they need it. Kind of like buying life insurance after the fact. And that has to be considered in the whole equation, but I don’t think that is the main reason they want to tax the people who opt out.

One major reason people opt out of health care is because they are already covered by their spouse’s plan, and there can be a cost penalty for the family if there are two plans. It sounds crazy but this happened to my family years back. Since both my wife and my plan covered the kids we had to pay off both deductibles before either plan kicked in. We would have been better off with one or the other but not both.

Then when I went to opt out of my health care and take the cash, they gave me $350. That for opting out of the health care plan the company claimed was costing them $4,000. Their explanation was the cash payout was so low because they were “afraid” too many people would opt out and leave their families uncovered. yeah right.