Health Care or Health Insurance?

How do you use health insurance?  As a health plan or as catastrophic insurance?  

Walmart recently posted rising costs for employees who take coverage benefits.  This has proven to be the same for me personally lately as well through my own employer.  

We use it as the later.  The rising costs of the company provided plan we were on, which didn't provide the options we wanted anyway, forced me to get individual coverage from the same carrier.  We were able to get a high-deductible, 100% out of pocket with no life max plan that had an HSA attached.  That means my deductible and all costs are tax deductible, for now, and we just keep that HSA growing as we know with age will come higher health care costs for us individually.  

Using health care as a "plan" is a bit of a bad investment.  Consider what you pay for a health club membership and compare to what you pay for insurance.  If you expect insurance to cover every sinus infection, you're using a product intended as a safety net incorrectly and perhaps are contributing to the overall rise of health care.  Consider this - paying for your own Dr. Office visit incurs very little administrative overhead for the Dr., especially if you pay cash or use a debit attached to an HSA account.  When you use insurance, there is a cost in man hours and paper work to get that claim processed, and guess where the cost gets passed on to?

Part of fixing our country is reducing welfare use, but also wising up and using the tools we have in a more intelligent fashion.  Paying out of pocket and taking out catastrophic coverage will get you in the mode of saving up your money for that higher deductible, but it also makes better use of your dollars in the short term.  Be frugal and spread the word.