Many companies are now offering what they call limited benefit medical plans. These are basically plans that have a very low annual cap on the benefits they pay off. My employer recently sent me a brochure for one of these plans. They had plans with costs as low as $6.95 a week. With this plan you would only have to pay a $20 co-pay to see a doctor. I thought this seemed like a decent deal until I read that the annual cap on benefits is $500. The cost of this plan is $361.40 a year, that means the maximum amount you could actually benefit from this plan is $138.60 in a year. It seems to me that my employer is trying to make a profit off of me rather than offer a benefit. To make this deal worse many of the employees are young and/or have limited education and may not realize how limited their medical coverage is. Employees would probably be better off having no medical coverage at all than with one of these limited benefit plans. For more information about these plans read this article at USA Today.
