Don't you just hate it? When the answer to a really important question is well, it just depends. But unfortunately, this is exactly the case when it comes to picking the right health insurance deductible for you and your family. For most people, this fateful decision feels more like spinning a roulette wheel and then trying to guess what number you should bet on the pressure's on and there's a lot on the line and win or lose. 

You're gona be stuck with the consequences of that choice for an entire year. Hi. My name's Art getz with the Health Benefits Network, where we give you the scoop on the latest ideas and innovations about health. 

Healthcare and health benefits that can make your life better just to be clear. Your insurance deductible is the amount of cash that you have to come up with to pay towards your large medical needs before the insurance company pays a dime. After the deductibles paid by you, the rest of the medical bills are typically shared between you and your insurance company like 8020 or 7030 where you're responsible for paying your part and the insurance company pays the rest. With an average hospital stay costing around 25 thousand dollars or more, you could end up paying twice the deductible amount, maybe more. Now just to be clear when it comes to picking your deductible. It isn't going matter if your health insurance is provided by your employer or purchased through one of the health insurance exchanges. Either way, the deductible works pretty much the same way for both. When you pick your deductible, you're essentially deciding on how much of your health risk you are going to keep for the next 12 months and how much of the risk you want to pay the insurance company to take on. 

You're essentially betting all the money that you spend on insurance premiums as a hedge against the financial risk that you might roll Snake Eyes and come down with some expensive illness or injury. So just like any good bookie, you'll weigh the odds as objectively as possible. But making the right bet means taking a number of variables and unknown factors into consideration. 

Basically insurance is at best a wild guess for most people. Obviously your health and health history and lifestyle are big factors that need to be taken into consideration. But if you have something serious healthwise going on or you're being advised by your doctor to consider serious health care in your immediate future that will have a big bearing on the insurance deductible that you choose. On the other hand, if you and your family are like most of us and generally healthy, then you're going to prefer going with a higher deductible and keeping the premium expenses as low as possible commensurate with your best assessment of your own health risk because as we all know, the money that you bet on insurance premiums is gone once that roulette wheel stop spinning. What I mean by this is that at the end of the year if you're still healthy, you don't get to apply for a refund of those premium dollars they belong to the insurance company. And this is exactly why so many healthy people are switching to health insurance alternatives like Health Sharing

Before you choose your deductible, it's really important to understand exactly how your deductible is going to work. When you get sick, you might be surprised by any number of pitfalls that you just may not see coming. For example, some people end up on the hook for way more money than they expect when an out-ofnetwork doctor works on you at your in-network hospital. This is not something you want to find out about when you're laying in a hospital bed and your life is spinning out of control and remember whatever you decide during open enrollment, you're stuck with it for the next 12 months. No matter what happens in picking the right deductible for you, it's a really good idea to consider how much you can actually afford to take out of your savings or retirement accounts if something really bad happens, or do you have enough available on your credit cards to cover the deductible? Just in case another way to offset the shock of a high deductible. 

Is to start parking some money in a health savings account, but with annual contribution limits. It could take you a few years or more to accumulate enough money to cover a six or 7 thousand dollars deductible now while you want to pick the highest deductible that you can live with. 
To limit your monthly premium cost. You also don't want to pick a deductible so high that a major health event would wipe out your savings or max out your credit cards or leave you with a pile of unpaid medical bills. Did you know that this is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in our country? Unpaid medical bills for people with insurance. 

That's just crazy. People wonder how does that even happen? And I remind them that your health insurance deductible. It's an annual amount that you're responsible for. If someone has a bad illness that continues from one year into the next, that meter starts all over again. So one bad episode on Christmas Eve and you could be on the hook for twice the deductible plus any coinsurance that you might owe it sure makes you wonder if health insurance is really all it's cracked up to be. 

Especially if you're healthy not to beat a dead horse, but if this makes your head nod an agreement, check out our video on medical cost sharing. Another big factor that should be dialed into your determination of health insurance deductible is any network restrictions that come along with it. The lower deductible only applies as long as you use the doctors that are in the insurance network, the ones they pick for you. They say network restrictions are their way to keep premiums and deductibles lower. I guess they never heard about Google and Price shopping before, but just remember choosing that lower deductible with a limited network could end up costing you more money. In the end, why do they need to make it so complicated? It makes you wonder what else are they hiding? It's frustrating. But if you get really sick and the world's best specialist is right down the street but not in your insurance network, you could have to pay a whole lot more money just to go to the best doctor. For this reason, it's very important to look closely at the network being offered by your health insurance company to keep their premiums low. Most healthy people are actually willing to gamble on a higher deductible health insurance policy. 

Even one with more restrictive network. So if you really want health insurance, you may have to sacrifice your choices in health and healthcare, or except that you might end up paying a much larger out of network deductible to get the best care that you want in the end. 

Choosing the best health insurance deductible for you and your family is in reality more like gambling than a true science. You're going to pay someone else a profit in exchange for taking on the risk that you might come down with something bad and end up in the hospital. 

So choose your health insurance deductible with your health and your finances in mind do be careful not to overinsure. It's a total waste of money and it leaves you feeling like your horse came in last because health insurance companies will not give your money back no matter how healthy you are with health carers. As with most things in life, sometimes it's just better to pay with cash than to use the insurance to pay. But the real truth is this, paying cash for all your routine health care and focusing on living a healthy lifestyle is the real secret to keeping your insurance cost low or by switching to a more affordable Health Sharing for protection.