<sigh>
Health insurance for the self employed - what a #$!@# mess it is!
Mr. Athena and I are both self employed. For the past year, we’ve been insured through the COBRA plan of my last employer. Starting Jan 1, the premiums are going through the roof, and we’re only eligible for it until August or so anyways. I started looking for health insurance about a month ago.
With the help of the esteemed Weirddave, the first health insurance I found was through the National Association of the Self Employed. It ain’t cheap - more than $500/month for the two of us - but it seems to be pretty good. I was just about ready to go ahead and sign up for it, when a friend mentioned having good luck with an insurance agent here in town. OK, I’ll check it out.
This place offered what looks like really great coverage at about half the cost of the NASE plan. The NASE plan is an 80/20 plan, meaning that we’re responsible for 20% of the cost of treatement. This local plan, on the other hand, covers 100% of the cost above $500. AND it covers doctors visits, prescriptions, all kinds of stuff! Great! Yeah, it’s an PPO, but I can live with an PPO. Then I went and looked up the company (American Community) on AM Best and Standard and Poors. They both rate it along the lines of “Hmmm… looks like it’s gonna go belly up at any time and leave you without insurance.”
Crap.
So then I check out another really big insuror in our area - Blue Cross Blue Shield. They have a variety of programs, ranging from pretty inexpensive HMO type things to more pricey traditional insurance. BC/BS is also rated very highly on AM Best and Standard & Poors. So what’s the catch? They offer NO prescription coverage. Nada. Nothing. That scares me - can’t precriptions potentially be a MAJOR expense?
<sigh>
So here’s my choices:
1 - go with NASE, which looks like excellent insurance (Thanks, Dave!). The company - Mega Insurance - is rated very highly. However, their 100% coverage plan is very expensive, and the 80/20 plan scares me. Assuming the worst happens and one of us gets really, really sick, 20% could add up very quickly. If Mr. Athena gets sick, we’d barely have the money to pay the premiums, much less come up with 20% of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills.
2 - American Community provides it all, at a really reasonable price. But the company itself sucks, according to the insurance ratings guys. What’s the point of paying for insurance if you have to worry about the company going under, or fighting you on every single medical expense?
3 - Blue Cross/Blue Shield looks good, except for the whole prescription thing. Paying for some prescription stuff is ok; however I’ve heard enough horror stories of prescriptions being along the lines of $500/month (or more!) and having NO prescription coverage seems pretty bad.
It just seems like NOTHING is ideal, so I turn to you, the SDMB, for opinions on what the best compromise is. Go with the 80/20 plan and hope to hell things don’t really go badly and I’m stuck without a reasonable income AND 20% of many thousands of dollars worth of medical bills? Go with option #2, and hope the company doesn’t suck too badly? Or go with option #3, and hope that whatever horrible illness we may or may not come down with doesn’t require really expensive medication?
Life sucks right now.