Yesterday, I spent a great deal of time comparing individual health insurance plans. A great place to find plans that are available in your state is ehealthinsurance.com. I was able to see many different policies, and then choose some to compare side by side.
I have looked at that site many times before, but I was never very confident with choosing a single plan. There’s the matter of coinsurance, deductibles, lifetime maximums….it was very overwhelming. Since we do not have employer sponsored health insurance, we have the ability to pick a plan from many different companies. That can be overwhelming as well.
There’s a book that really helped me gain some confidence with my decision, and I’ll have a review for that probably tomorrow. But I just couldn’t wait to share the news with everyone that a decision has been made and the first application has been submitted (especially since there are some out there who have been waiting for us to get health insurance 
).
We decided to go with the only plan available that had maternity benefits. There may or may not be an addition to our family in the future – but we want to be prepared and covered in the event that we decide to add to our family. The insurance is also a very trusted company in our family – Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. Back in the day, we had an employer-sponsored Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan policy and we never had a problem with them.
The plan we are applying for has no dedictible and it has 30% coinsurance. What that means is that we will have to pay 30% of all services up to our out-of-pocket yearly maximum, which is $2,500 for an individual / $5,000 for the family. After hearing a few stories of what some relatively simple procedures can cost – having to pay up to $5,000 isn’t that bad.
An individual plan does come with a hefty price. Until we receive the official application in the mail to sign and remit with 2-month’s payment (the next step), we will not know the exact price. Right now, we just did a pre-application. Since health insurance policy prices change often, who knows exactly what it will be. The price quoted by ehealthinsurance.com was around $330/month. That will run about $4,000/year.
Another reason we decided to go with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is that they do not require medical records and they have an unlimited lifetime benefit.
For us, at this point in our lives, I feel confident that this policy is the best one for our family. I will try to review our policy at least yearly and see if any other policies arise that would be better suited for us. Perhaps we can go with a cheaper policy.
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Posted: November 5th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
It’s about time. Health insurance is so important!
Congrats. May you all be healthy!
Posted: November 5th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Thanks D!
Posted: January 3rd, 2007 at 10:16 pm
[...] The beginning of Health Care on Less Than You Think starts off with some sobering stories of individuals that have had their financial life rocked by medical costs. Even more surprising is the number of those people that HAD health insurance. Obtaining health insurance has been a priority of mine, but I have been dragging my feet with doing it. After reading what some of those people have paid for medical procedures – it really sunk in that one problem could easily rack up over $5,000 in medical bills. Needless to say, my application is in process as I announced yesterday. [...]
Posted: May 13th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
[...] Tricia at Blogging Away Debt, I spent some time this weekend reading Fred Brock’s latest book, Health Care on Less Than [...]