This may be a stupid question, but I'll ask anyway.
For those who have HDHP, do you find yourself avoiding or postponing seeing a doctor or getting medical services just to avoid paying out of pocket deductible. I do, and it's driving me crazy. But I can't seem to change it. The thing that gets me even more upset is that a) am looking for a new job, so I keep telling myself, if I payout a large chunk of my deductible now, once i find a job I'll have to start a whole new deductible all over again, and b) at my current job, health insurance year is June 1 to May 31st, not a calendar year, so it's not like I can wait another month and then have my deductible start over and even if I pay it out completely, I'll have a whole the rest of the year of really cheap (10% coinsurance after deductible) healthcare.
My current insurance is crap and very expensive. $720/month out of paycheck, deductibe/max OOP is $4K/$7K for in network and $7K/$19K for out of network. I would really like to start seeing a therapist again. I have depression and I can't take any meds for it, and long term therapy is the only thing that helped in the past. Also, I am thinking of an elective surgery that is most likely not going to be covered by the insurance, but would greatly improve quality of life. Nothing life-threatening or anything like that, but really something I'd like to do. I am about to schedule an appointment to find out if it would be covered. If the answer is not, then it's out of the question. I can't afford it. But if it will be covered, that's basically $7K out of pocket and then come June, it all starts over. Have cash savings that I could potentially use for this, but it would be a large chunk out of that amount and I feel like I need to have that cash as my emergency fund. Single parent, one income, unemployed ex who's not paying child support.
I have about $16K in my HSA account, but I really don't want to use it. I look at as a secondary IRA account and since nothing in my life is life threatening right now, I don't feel like it's justifiable to use this HSA account. It is part of my paltry NW amount and I've been working very hard for the past 2 years to safe and grow my NW from scratch.
As a side note, I find mid-year insurance plans to be very confusing and inconvenient.