This is the site to use. It sounds fishy but it's actually the best health insurance comparison site for the US. Once you choose a plan, you end up applying directly to the insurer; you don't give any personal information except your age and zip code to eHealthInsurance.
I got my plan through them. $3000 deductible (annually, that's the out of pocket limit), no coverage limits, so if there's cancer or something it's covered no matter how expensive it is... $83/month with Aetna.
Some states don't let you buy high deductible plans or require that lots of stuff can't have a deductible (or in this case maybe it wouldn't satisfy the Romney-care insurance requirement, just a guess, I don't know). I remember looking at New York and couldn't find anything for less than $250.
When my insurance hit $10,000 a year -- which I had NEVER had a claim, I dropped it.
Fucking scam.
Seriously, my work pays for my insurance and my family's is still ~$10k per year. I'm looking into low cost alternatives w/ HSA.
I am single, beyond child-bearing years, no major claims and it is RIDICULOUS. When I finally did have a claim for an outpatient procedure, they denied it. FUCK FORTIS.
Massachusetts and New York are both Guaranteed Issue states. Meaning, they have to issue insurance to any person who wants it. They cannot decline that person. I also believe the rating bands are narrow by law. So that you can only pay 50% of some sick 65-year-old.
In California, they don't have to accept you, so they really only accept healthier individuals. I believe the rating bands in California are wider, so they are allowed to charge younger people a lot less relative to older people.
In Mass, a young male subsidizes unhealthier and older individuals. In California, they do not. This is why you get the price difference.
Then I have to pay the state when tax time comes because I didn't have insurance because I couldn't afford it. I've been looking into getting it from the state (MassHealth), so that might be an option.
There's a way to get out of the no-health-insurance penalty if your income is low enough. There's also subsidized insurance available from the MA Health Connector. Information about both of those is listed under Commonwealth Care (including a quiz/calculator to find out where your income stands in their brackets in terms of escaping tax penalties or getting discounted coverage).
Sadly my income is just a hair above the subsidization limit, so I wind up paying over $250/month.
well the MA plan he's referring to is a $2K deductible, which isn't that low. it seems like they're forcing him to foot the bill for older/sicker people, then fining him if he refuses to play ball.
I'm an MA resident too and just don't understand why health insurance is so ridiculously expensive here. If everybody is insured, isn't it supposed to be cheaper?
Only if your insurance premium is linked to your income. In the UK, the NHS is paid for through general taxation, which is generally progressive in its taxation. Everyone who earns money is taxed; the more you earn, the more you pay [towards the NHS]. Everyone is then put one one huge risk pool, and the cost for the service is calculated accordingly.
In MA, your premium is linked to both your risk to the insurer, and the fact you're in a larger risk pool full of high-risk members. I don't know if there is an insurer of last-resort, or if all insurers are regulated in some way to ensure provision, but at any rate: for the majority of people, private health insurance is more expensive than a national health insurance scheme (such as the NHS).
No, you are paying for all the sick people. The MA rate is the sustainable steady state rate. They could however reduce rates by allowing more competition and reducing regulations.
In CA, an insurance co will only insure healthy people, so can offer deep discount rates, while offloading the cost burden of poor sick people to the government, taxpayers, Medicare, and private hospital ER rooms. Eventually as more people drop ins due to rising rates, and the state defaults on bonds, it will implode.
In NYC, the cost is high because the rent is high. I pay $430/m. I dont know about rural NY.
The cost of health insurance is high because the rent is high?
I think the cost is high in New York for many of the same reasons it is high Massachusetts.
Was hoping it was obvious and would not need to explain it. NYC is world class city, everyone in world wants to live here, greater demand yields higher prices, those prices are always passed to consumer. In order for doctor in NYC to live as nice as elsewhere, she's going to charge more, plus pay staff more for their cost of living etc. NYC is land limited so cannot build out, plus has rent control limiting incentives to build more units.
MA is different because it has mandatory insurance regulations.
If you are sick right now, use this to find a sliding scale health care center. This was set up by the Affordable Health Care act and helps people without insurance. It covers general checkups, when you're sick, dental, prescriptions, mental health, etc.
If you go, and they find something, you'll never get insurance.
Buy insurance at least first, and keep it regardless. Health isn't about if you're going to die, it's about when. Gambling on the outcome isn't worth it. Get insurance and keep it, once you give it up, it's difficult to get back.
It really is. Single-payer makes sense; between the taxes paid and other intangible contributions a citizen makes the gov't has far more of an interest in keeping me alive than any insurance company ever could.
Re: govt wants to keep you alive. How do you explain nuclear testiing near people in the desert? How do you explain syphilus testing on poor black people in the south? How do you explain sending young people to undefined wars in foreign lands to die for deceptive reasons? How do you explain FDA food guide pyramids that promoted refined grains and sugars which lead to obesity? How do you explain corn subsidies to reduce cost of high fructose corn syrup which leads to diabetes?
What do any of those have to do with health care? Of course there are aspect of gov't that will exploit aspects of society, just as there are aspects of the free market that will exploit the old, sick, uninformed, you name it. It's called 'human nature', and it's the same reason human history is filled with wars and other atrocities.
I stand by my statement - the gov't has far more of an invested interest in my health than any insurance company ever can. There's a reason why every other first-world industrialized nation has nationalized health care. Imagine if the US had spent as much in the last 10 years on keeping people alive as it has on trying to make them dead.
Health care should never go to the lowest bidder. And there's just as much waste, bureaucracy and fraud in the private sector as anywhere. Please tell me what incentive an insurance company has to keep me alive after I get sick? There are too many stories of insurance carriers dropping someone once they have to start paying on a policy.
Re: Prices. Yes, it should go to lowest bidder. That's how prices work to contain costs.
Re: Waste. Ins companies pay very smart people a lot of money to uncover fraud. Bureaurocrats don't care; it's not their money!
Re: Incentives. Yes, ins. companies care to keep you healthy so you don't get sick and keep paying them for a very long time. They are bound by same contract laws that require fire ins. companies to pay for house fire damage. Yes, there needs to be a rule to not allow dropping or no rejection rule, but such a rule also requires mandatory coverage. That is only because it is inhumane to relegate a genetically deficient human to death while dropping an arsonist's fire policy is not inhumane.
Up until Obamacare an insurance company could drop you for no reason; I speak from experience, and can point to examples online. I'm self-employed, do you want to get into a serious discussion about how hard and expensive it is for me to insure myself and my family? I suspect you're pretty clueless.
Health care absolutely shouldn't go to the lowest bidder, it should go to whomever is willing to do whatever it takes to heal me, cost be damned. I personally know a child who suffered partial permanent hearing loss because of 'lowest cost' bullshit. Had she received proper care from the outset, instead of some penny-pinching accountant telling her doctors to keep it brief because of cost, then she'd have her hearing and Keizer-Permanente wouldn't have been successfully sued. Unfortunately, money can't fix everything - she'll never hear properly, and will always need an aid.
If you haven't had any medial advice or care about your problem, you may not have a pre-existing condition in your state. If you go to health care provider, insurance companies can look into your history to see if you've talked to someone about the problem. I think you may still be able to get coverage for this if you get insurance before talking to somebody. But cancer is nothing to mess around with, so just do what you need to do....
I havent had anything really. The last time I had any contact with a doc was about a physical and almost everything turned up clean from my blood work. I just put in an application for coverage and am going to a clinic on tuesday to see what I can do while I wait for my coverage to kick in (if it does).
If you suspect that anything is really wrong with you, don't get it checked out before you get insurance.
I have asthma. I haven't had an attack in over 15 years and only use my emergency inhaler during allergy season, and occasionally when I ride my bike on spare the air days (gotta get to work). That's an extra $100/month right there. Just for asthma.
I wrote up a post on this recently and I'd also suggest looking at a High Deductible Health Plan combined with an HSA. That'll give you a pretty low monthly cost being young and healthy plus cover you for emergencies, and at least with HDHPs in Virginia, all preventive care is 100% covered.
My advice would be to ask a doctor. A doctor would know the best plans out there for good coverage, and good care. What I do know is that it's always better to get a PPO, instead of an HMO, like Kaiser is. With a PPO, you can choose a private practice doctor, and the best rated hospital in your area, and it's covered. Also, if you need referrals to a specialist, it doesn't have to be approved first by some idiot clerk at an HMO. And if you need tests run, it doesn't have to be approved first by that idiot clerk, either. HMO's make money by DENYING care, not giving care. And Kaiser tends to hire doctors that have been kicked off of hospital staffs due to malpractice. That way they don't have to pay them as much.
Assuming you aren't so sick that it would count as a preexisting condition (probably shouldn't go on week one your insurance kicks in, long enough you can pretend it was a recently started thing, the good news is being a young nonsmoker there will likely be no physical or whatnot.)
The things you should look at are at the high end not the low end. I am pretty sure lifetime maximums don't exist anymore, but when I was last shopping there were all kind of terrrrrrible deals if you were looking at a multi-million dollar bill resulting in lifetime crippling debt. Imagine millions in bills and do the math from there, imagine specialists, etc, some have different rates and deductibles for specialists and whatnot.
You probably want a higher deductible but with 100% coverage at the high end, there will not be any frugal option for good coverage of both low deductible and robust catastrophic coverage, you might be able to find something with a preventative copay and some prescription help, but if I were you I would be focusing on the catastrophic high end. The low end stuff is icing for people who aren't prone to crippling cancers and usually adds a ton to the total price, the high end stuff keeps you from bankruptcy.
Their you getting sick calculator says 23 year old nonsmokers are not likely to have million dollar cancer treatments, but you are likely to use the doctor for trivial stuff. So the pricing is biased in your favor.
Be careful of generic only coverage too, sometimes they simply don't exist and you need a very expensive set of pills, this again is where the high end coverage helps.
Good luck
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