My Fellow [self-employed] Americans - Your Suggestions on Health Insurance?

[Greg Truby]

As some of you may have noticed, this board has been sadly lacking in smart aleck remarks and threadjackings fer 'bout the past year or so. I do apologize, but I've been up to me **** in alligators most days since I went ahead and started my own company doing professional Excel development when Sony closed our facility in the fall of 2009.

Well, the ol' COBRA has run out and for the past couple o' months I have been relying on sheer dumb luck for my health insurance plan. I'm starting to lose sleep that my luck might peter out or worse, end suddenly.

I'm looking at BC/BS or Humana through ehealthinsurance.com. Any thoughts, experiences or suggestions anyone would like to share?

And please - this is not a request for rants about whether we should or should not have nationalized health care, nor rants about the unbelievable cost of many insurance plans. Nor is this a request for comparisons between the US health care system and any other nation's. Yeah, yeah, we suck; but I ain't willing [yet] to move to Canada or the UK just for health care.

I'm just asking fer input from folks that have had to procure insurance due to being self employed. So if'n ya got some experience in that, by all means, please share.

 

[Tom Urtis]

My situation is different than yours for consideration of health plan coverage, in that you have a wife and dependent kids, while I have neither. But to protect myself financially if I get hit by the proverbial bus (or by the actual bus given the bus drivers here in San Francisco) I have an Anthem Blue Cross policy that has a few thousand bucks for deductible, which is chump change in the context of major medical bills. When deciding on an insurance policy, a lot depends on how healthy a person is, that is, how likely it is a claim will need to be filed. Determine some reasonable middle ground where you don't underbuy if someone has a chronic ailment, or overbuy if everyone is generally healthy with no problems. To me, and this will sound like an editorial comment but it's not, insurance policies, especially health, are confusing and unfriendly because what they don't say is what they don't cover. Caveat emptor.

 

[shades]

Howdy, Greg. My Cobra went out in Mar 2010. I had waited until late January to make a switch. We wanted to save money for the new job (non-profit), but it went hayware for us. For me, I went with Humana (I’m soon 62), and have a reasonable plan ($270/month plus HSA $300/month with a $5000 deductible). Has worked well for me. (I used a local KS company to set it up)

HOWEVER, my wife (age 59) has never been in the hospital, never in the ER, etc., went in for a routine physical before the switch. Her blood pressure was high but not excessive. No one would touch her for less than $1500/month with a $5000 deductible. So she has been without insurance for 15 months. Her blood pressure has been under control for the past 8 months, but it’s amazing how alienating this has been for us by the insurance companies.

Word of advice; make the change before Cobra runs out.