I had good dental coverage with access to any doctor, and it usually cost quite a bit out of pocket. But the doc was cool, excellent staff, super clean facility, appointments within a day or two, and treament like a king. I got tired of the copay so elected the HMO-style dental plan. Same quality of dental care, I imagine, but the lower pay to the doctor leaves no room for incentive to improve the clinic, so relatively speaking it’s kind of a dump. There’s very little face time with the doctor, who’s always in a hurry, and you’ve got to order teeth cleaning appointments four months out!
When my wife was going through dental school, she had a lot of unneccessary work done, and did a lot of unneccessary work to her colleagues, just to do the lab work. That’s probably not ethical these days, the unneeded work part.
I’ve had really good dental coverage before. I had them pay for things that my dentist told me she’d never seen insurance pay for before.
It was part of the benefits package that came when I worked for a Very Large Company. In general, all their benefits were excellent, from health to vacation to retirement.
Bear in mind, there’s non-insurance discount dental and medical services you can subsrcibe to, just to provide some element of coverage as a stop-gap before you’re able to get insured again. My wife is a rep for one (no names; I won’t spam), so I know they’re not all scams. You do have to be careful, though.
“As an independent contractor and a healthy person with 2 healthy teenage kids who uses very little medical care, my insurance cost is over 6000 annually with a 3500 deductible per person.”
The most he is on the hook for is $ 16,500. ($3,500*3+6,000). Checking my pay stub, I’m paying $2,852.72 per year. That is 20%, my employer pay 80%. For a total of about 14,260 per year for my family. (feel free to check the math, its not what I'm known for). My deductable is 500 so I’m ( and employer) paying about $14,760 to his $16,500. Doesn’t seem too far out of line.
And after your deductible is met, don’t you still have to pay co-insurance on the next “x” amount of claims, until you hit your true “out of pocket maximum”?
Depends on what you mean by “afford.” I have been on COBRA twice, and am now paying for HIPAA continuation coverage. This is the only way I can get health insurance.
Consider a combination of catastrophic health coverage and a Health Care Savings Account.
Here Blue Cross/Blue Shield will give you catastrophic health care (deductible of $2500+) for about $90/month. An extra $23/month will get you full dental care (low deductible, good deal as far as I can tell), and you can put up to $5000/year in an HSA. Anything you put in the HSA is reduces your taxable income, the HSA money can be used for any medical expense, and anything you don’t use each year rolls over into a retirement account. It’s a pretty sweet deal.
IANAInsurance agent, but I do work for a health insurance company (not BC/BS, we manage Medicaid and Medicare plans for the state of Oregon.)
Hubby paid COBRA rates for a few months last year, until benefits kicked in on his new job. $550 a month, if I remember right, just for him.
I administered COBRA at my last job, and very rarely did someone elect the coverage, maybe 1%, and most of them were early retirees who needed something until they were eligible for Medicare.
Employee medical benefits is (IMHO) the only reason many of us older folks keep working. Otherwise we’d step aside and let you young’uns have our jobs.
This is not looking good at all. $1500 deductible and $250 a month? And double that for lab tests. This is horrible stuff. People will just start gambling with their health. “Should I pay $700 in lab tests or should I just wait and see if it goes away on its own?”
I have to confess the situation is much, much worse than I thought it was.
Get a Job. Have your wife get a job. I’m just not being a smartass. There are some nice retail companies that will cover you if you are a Permament Part Time worker. One of my freinds is self-employed, but works 4 hours a week at a retail job as they give him Health insurance @ $100/month. Not the best in the world, but there are others available.
I’m not the OP, but I have been trying to help my mom find new health insurance. Right now she’s paying more than $600 a month on a COBRA policy from my dad’s last job. Since Dad now qualifies for Medicare she was thinking about dropping the insurance completely, but she’s worried about the risks of not being insured.
I’m thinking that an HSA might be a better option for Mom. Thanks for the info!
Is the plan your mom is paying for now through COBRA a plan that covers both her and your dad? And is your dad no longer eligible for that COBRA policy because he is now eligible for Medicare? (Most plans require someone who becomes eligible for Medicare to lose COBRA coverage.) If your dad cannot use his old group plan because he’s now eligible for Medicare, your mom should be able to stay on his old employer’s COBRA under the “Employee Only” option just for herself. That is, she becomes the “employee” since she is by law eliglble for COBRA because her spouse, who used to be covered under a group policy, is no longer eligible to be covered since he’s now on Medicare. If the plan she’s on now is the old one that included your dad, the rates are naturally much higher than just for herself.
You might want to have them check with his old employer. No sense in paying for two people on the plan if it’s only her who needs COBRA coverage.
Yes, it is bad. I couldn’t find a policy that covered everything unless I got into the $500+/month for one healthy person range. What we opted for was coverage that looks to be very very good if anything really bad happens (cancer, bad accident, brain tumor, etc) but pretty much nonexistent for every day problems (flu, conjunctivitis, sinus infections.)
We also paid a premium for prescription coverage. The local Blue Cross/Blue Shield here has policies similiar to what we opted for at a much cheaper price (half, if I remember right) but no prescription coverage. Given that prescriptions for Big Bad Things (cancer, etc) can get pretty darn pricey, we opted to pay more for a policy that covered them.
Employer-based coverage is much better. I’m currently working, and my coverage costs me about $50 less than I paid for independent coverage, and covers a lot more. Once Mr. Athena and I legally tie the knot, he’ll be covered as well, and we can say goodbye to sucky insurance.
