Her health insurance plan as an employee at Santa Rosa’s Redwood Gospel Mission has a $5,400 deductible, meaning she has to pay the first $5,400 in medical expenses each year.
The plan, which costs her about $250 a month, one-fourth of the total premium, was adequate as long as no one in her family got sick, Lowe said. But a case of acute pancreatitis sent her to the hospital several times this year, and Lowe’s share of the bills surpassed her deductible and hit the $9,000 out-of-pocket limit, wiping out an inheritance.
“I don’t have a cushion to fall back on,” said Lowe, who makes $2,500 a month working at the mission’s Thrift Store on Piner Road. “We’ll just be praying that I don’t have another attack.”
She’s among the 34 percent of California workers with health insurance deductibles of $2,000 or more last year, one consequence of the runaway costs of health care — and health insurance — in the United States.
In 2006, just 15 percent of workers had deductibles in that range.
Jeff Gilman, executive director of the gospel mission, said he has to hold costs for insuring the nonprofit charity’s 25 full-time employees to a total of $150,000 a year.
That meant boosting co-payments, and then the deductible, which is now $5,400 a year for most employees. View Full Article »
