SureChoice

Understanding health insurance plans can be difficult, and comparing the pros and cons of different plans can be especially complex. This Python script plots your out-of-pocket cost for different plans as a function of total annual incurred medical costs so you can make better-informed decisions about your health insurance plan.

Some plans may be quite cost-effective if your total medical costs are low, but will be extremely costly if an expensive medical event happens unexpectedly. Some scale more linearly. Others cost a lot out-of-pocket up front, but pay off with higher total medical costs. Comparing plans in this way enables you to choose the best plan for your expected medical costs.

Background and Key Terms

When using this code, it helps to understand a few key health insurance terms:

• premium: a fixed monthly payment for being on a plan.
• deductible: the total out-of-pocket amount to be paid before insurance covers anything.
• copay: the percentage of a total cost to be paid out-of-pocket after the deductible is met.
• out-of-pocket maximum: the maximum total out-of-pocket cost before insurance covers 100% of all subsequent payments.

More background can be found in my blog post.

Installation

This is a fairly simple Python script. You need:

• Any installation of Python 3.x.
• The matplotlib package.

Clone this repository using your Git client of choice, or on the command line:

git clone https://github.com/jdaymude/SureChoice.git

Preparing Plans for Comparison

To compare health insurance plans, you'll need to edit the various costs in plans.json (or make your own data file with the same structure). The schema of this file is:

{
  "info" : {
    "project" : "SureChoice",
    "author" : "Joshua J. Daymude",
    "license" : "MIT"
  },
  "plans" : [
    {
      "name" : <string>,            # Name of insurance plan
      "short_name" : <string>,      # Short name of plan to show in plot legend
      "description" : <string>,     # Description of plan
      "premium" : <float>,          # Monthly payment
      "deductible" : <float>,       # Plan deductible
      "copay" : <float>,            # Plan copay, number in [0,1]
      "max_oop" : <float or "Inf">  # Max out-of-pocket charge, or "Inf" if none
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Running SureChoice

To run SureChoice, use:

python3 surechoice.py --data <path to plans.json>

Optionally, one can also use the --max_annual_cost variable to define the maximum total annual medical cost to consider. All options can be viewed with python3 surechoice.py -h.

Feedback & Contributing

SureChoice is a very minimal piece of software that could have many improvements (e.g., supporting Financial Savings Accounts). If you'd like to leave feedback, please post an issue. If you'd like to contribute, please submit your code via a pull request.