For the last couple of years my family doctor has offered me the option of purchasing extended health coverage to pay for any of his services that I would have to pay for, such as copying records, immunizations, and filling out medical forms. The list is actually 23 items long. I’ve never bothered to pay this “block fee” with the reasoning that I rarely need any of these services, and they are relatively cheap even if I need them one day. However, over the past year, I actually spent a total of $60 on services from my family doctor that weren’t covered by provincial health insurance. Each time I coughed up another $20, I felt like I was losing out. If only I had paid for the insurance, I wouldn’t have to be digging into my pocket. What if I incur more costs this year and it works out that I have to pay more than the amount of the insurance? When the papers inviting me to sign up for extended coverage for the upcoming year arrived, my first reaction was to pay. I had to think...

The basic idea of insurance is that you pay a premium to an insurance company that agrees to cover you for a low probability large loss. For example, you might pay $500 per year for house insurance, and the insurance company agrees to rebuild your house if it burns down. For some reason, typical health insurance plans have this basic idea of insurance backwards. To illustrate what I mean, I’ll look at Sun Life’s basic personal health insurance plan (as of February 2009). I don’t intend to promote or criticize Sun Life in particular; other insurance companies have very similar plans. Sun Life’s basic plan has fairly low yearly dollar limits: - Prescription drugs: max $750/year - Dental: max $500/year - Alternative treatments: max $25/visit and $250/practitioner - Hearing Aids: max $400 per 5 years - Dental accidents: max $2000/injury - Medical equipment and in-home nursing: combined max $2500/year and max $20,000 lifetime To run a profitable business, an insurance compan...

Have you ever been to see a doctor who is obviously upset about something that has nothing to do with you? This has happened to me a couple of times where a doctor was complaining about something and I had little choice but to sympathize even though I was much more concerned about my own problems. Otherwise, why would I be seeing a doctor? One of these times the doctor was having a problem with her extended health coverage for topping up the basic Ontario government medical coverage. Her partners wanted her to go in with them on a plan that cost $400 per month for each doctor, but she saw in the fine print that the plan had a lifetime cap on all benefits of $25,000. She correctly figured out that she would pay $25,000 in premiums in just a little over 5 years. I asked her if she could afford to pay $25,000 right now if she had some sort of medical problem, and she said yes, which isn’t too surprising for someone with the income of a successful doctor. So, this means that the insura...