On Buying Health Insurance

There are more choices than there are distinctions. It’s impossible to see what’s different between various policies without being a statistician and actuary. I’m pretty math savvy and my head is swimming!

In the past we depended on insurance to help beginning with dollar one. Now, I’m wondering how important ‘dollar one’ really is.

obamacareSince I left FoxCT I have been insured through COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. All that means is no employer subsidy. I’m paying 100%.

Insurance is expensive. You probably already knew that.

Eighteen months have passed. I’m forced to get coverage on my own. This is among the most confusing things I’ve ever done!

First the good news. Under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, I can buy insurance! How that would have worked out before, considering my back surgery two summers ago and my age? All I know is, I’m insurable.

My beef with Obamacare is it doesn’t go far enough. Why do we bother with private insurance? Why must we confuse everyone? The rest of the world seems to prefer a single payer system. Seniors seem happy with Medicare.

There are too many choices.

Let me refine that. There are more choices than there are distinctions. It’s impossible to see what’s different between various policies without being a statistician or actuary. I’m pretty math savvy and my head is swimming!

In the past we depended on insurance to help beginning with dollar one. Now, I’m wondering how important ‘dollar one’ really is. Are we better off ‘self insuring’ for common medical problems and letting insurance kick in at big dollar amounts? How much out-of-pocket can I take?

Within the next day or two we will reach a decision. I wish it was a more educated decision.

3 thoughts on “On Buying Health Insurance”

  1. There was an article in our papers within the past week regarding buying private insurance and that it might be hard now that the window for buying with Obama care is now closed and there won’t be another open enrollment til Oct/Nov. The article leaned toward the fact that some of the private insurance companies have been refusing to sell now and are telling people they have to wait til the fall. If this is true—it is a scary thought. Once again, the institution is trying to rule the common ordinary citizen.

  2. Buying private insurance (the function of the exchange) has always been a crap-shoot for the buyer. For my policy, after answering over a hundred health questions I got to hold my breath for a few days while the underwriter considered my specific health and came back with a price. You never know if they will reject you or charge a huge premium. You can not shop around because the posted rates are for young people in perfect health. Get rejected? Too bad. No insurance. Then when you go elsewhere one of the first questions is have you been rejected by another company.

  3. Insurance for the self-employed was like swimming in shark-infested waters before the ACA. In the bad old days, i.e., before this year, I was lucky to get a $20K-a-year policy with a $5K deductible through a professional organization. Due to pre-existing conditions, there was no way I was going to be able to move to another plan. Yes, I wish it went further, but no, that simply wasn’t politically tenable.

    Thanks to the ACA, late last year I signed up for a plan that’s about $8K a year with a 6.5K deductible. Will it go up next year? Of course. But my old plan often increased by double-digit percentages every year, so nothing new there.

    I can’t figure out why those who claim to be pro-business are so anti-ACA. I suspect the reason is that one-person businesses like mine are of little interest to them.

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