Wow: A $5,700 Deductible for Health Insurance? Better Take Your Vitamins

If you think your 10 dollar co-pay is a pain, don’t miss this radio piece on the crisis in health care for rural farmers and farm workers on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

Howard Berkes tabulates the cost of health care for the Wilson family, who operate Seven W Farm in northwestern Iowa.

Their major medical insurance deductible is a whopping $5,700.

Berkes reports:

The Wilsons are both 57 years old, and they raise organic hogs, corn, soybeans and grain on 640 acres of rich, black earth in Paullina, Iowa. They are depending on their farm to fund their retirement, and they plan to pass it on to their kids. So their health insurance is more about their farm than their health.

“We probably have a net worth that we could weather one major incident,” Dan Wilson said. “But it would severely deplete the farming assets. So, we’re insuring the farm.”

The Wilsons describe themselves as healthy, but the best individual insurance plan they could find costs $492 a month. That’s for Dan and Lorna and one of their children. Their deductible is $5,700. They also have a tax-free health savings account, but they’ve only been able to save about $2,100 so far.

Straw hat tip to the Center for Rural Affairs, which is quoted throughout the piece.