In less than four months I have reached $1,589.96 in the initial coverage that stops at $2,400. Once I do, it looks like I will have to pay ALL of the next $1,450 in prescription costs, till I reach the $3,850 limit. But that's misleading. To get to $2,400, Aetna counts the costs of the prescriptions. To get to $3,850, Aetna counts ONLY your out-of-pocket prescription costs, not the total costs of the prescriptions. My "true out of pocket limit" is only $455 so far, which means I'll have to spend $3,395 more of my money before I hit the $3,850 limit. At least, that's the way I understand it.
That will more than wipe out the $1,750 advantage of Aetna over United Health Care in overall health care coverage. Remember, the United Health Care annual out-of-pocket limit was $2,000 but the Aetna limit is $250, which means we're $1,750 better off with Aetna than with UHC in that case.
As I said before, we're going to have some better and some worse financial situations with the forced switch to Aetna by the Canadian. I'm guessing we'll be worse off or the Canadian wouldn't have made the switch. He pays our health care premiums (plus Aetna gets our Medicare premiums and a government subsidy on top of that), but that has to cost him less than under UHC or he wouldn't have made the switch.
Our increased health care costs are a back-door cut in our pensions because we have less money for everything else.
If you want to find out how you stand with your Aetna prescriptions, or your overall health care, your running totals are available for your account at Aetna.com
If you know your actual Rx costs in 2007, click on Comments and let us know. If you opted for Summa or another plan rather than Aetna, also let us know. Then we can all compare and see which way we want to go for 2008.
Stay tuned.
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