Comments on: Health Insurance Clarification…

By: My Frugal Miser

My Frugal Miser — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:51:16 +0000

Good to hear you’ve come to your senses. I’ve never been unemployed until I lost my job 7 weeks ago. Learning a lot about what my real priorities need to be. I rarely need to see a doctor, but I’m not willing to gamble with not having insurance and risk being indebted the rest of my life due to some unforeseen ailment.

By: mv

mv — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:14:48 +0000

I’m confused about the need for COBRA coverage. If I recall you work in gov’t, don’t recall which level. Doesn’t you’re job provide insurance? Even if it’s not open enrollment period, the situation you are in would more than likely qualify as a life-altering event, which allows for enrollment outside of the open enrollment period.

With regards to COBRA – if you and you’re husband are healthy, with no pre-existing conditions, you may want to consider individual insurance. COBRA premiums can be very, very expensive as you pay both the employer and employee portions of the premium. For example, if I were to lose my job, the COBRA monthly payment would be between $600 and $800 per month for health/dental/vision, and I’m single, I’ve no idea how much it would be for employee+dependent(s). In previous jobs where I was laid off, the COBRA premiums were $350 – $450. I’m one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have a pre-existing condition that would bar me from purchasing individual health insurance. If I elected to do this, for health-care alone it would cost me less than $200 per month, and some individual plans also include dental and/or vision (although rare). Several years ago, when I was laid off, the COBRA premium was about $450, or slightly higher. I was able to get individual coverage for less than $150 – huge savings. Of course, this was indiviudal PPO and didn’t cover certain events, such as pregancy. But since I wasn’t planning on popping out a kid, I was fine with it. HMO coverage covering pregnancy would’ve been about $380…in which case, I would’ve kept the COBRA coverage.

Something to think about – there are options available, besides COBRA. In my opinion, COBRA is best if there is a pre-existing condition preventing the purchase of individual insurance.

By: Dogfood Provider

Dogfood Provider — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:34:03 +0000

It’s pretty cool how much passion your last post raised, and even cooler that your commenters were able to be helpful!

That advice about student health is great – when I was in grad school I took advantage of it. Lots of things like flu shots and preventative check ups were straight up free. Free is my kind of fee!

By: Valeria

Valeria — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:00:53 +0000

There’s another alternative to this – you can purchase a catastrophic coverage policy, one that only kicks in once the bill hits $10K or more. That means you deal with routine care on a cash basis, but if something major happens, your exposure is limited. You can, in time, pay off $10K to $25K – $250K bills are what ruins people. The downside is dealing with anything under the threshold – the upside is you pay less for the insurance and know that a major illness or accident will be covered

By: KMGaul

KMGaul — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:17:44 +0000

I’m not sure if this is still the case, but I thought I remembered many moons ago that you could retroactive COBRA. i.e. you have something like three months to elect coverage and if you do it retroacts.