Full Time Affiliates - What Do You Do For Health Insurance?

[MJ]

I'm a full time affiliate, this being my only job - and I support my fiance and son as well, we chose to have her home while our son grew up instead of using a daycare serice and working so that means at the end of this year our whole family will need health insurance privately - and I'm expecting the costs to be to the moon.

What do you full time guys do for health insurance? The easiest route in married couples is for one person to get a job that qualifies for some, but for the guys like me that will need to supply their whole family health insurance, what do you do and any ballpark on total cost?

I know it will be x,xxx per month, just curious how bad. Anyone ever join a "pool"?

[Bryan]

We have high-deductible health insurance ($5000 deductible), coupled with an HSA.

The insurance itself will likely run you anywhere from $200/month to $500/month. Ours is ~$250/month. The HSA allows you to contribute up to $6150 per year (for family coverage) pre-tax, and you can then use that $$ to pay for almost anything health-related.

This setup essentially caps your total yearly healthcare costs at:

(Insurance Premium * 12) + the insurance deductible

Which, in my case is:

($250 * 12) + $5000 = $8000

Last year, we spent a little over $1000 on health care (not including the insurance premiums), but this year we'll likely hit the $5000 deductible as baby #2 is due in September.

Personally, I fund the HSA 100% every year, and as we're able, I pay all health care costs out of pocket. The money in the HSA rolls over from year to year, and can be invested lots of different ways. After 2 years of this setup, we have ~$11k in the HSA so if at any point in the future my income drops I've got 2 years worth of "health expenses" saved up to cover all costs.

[MJ]

That's wayyyyyy better than I thought could be done man, thanks for the info.

[Bryan]

If you and your family are generally healthy, high deductible health insurance coupled with an HSA is absolutely the way to go.

The health insurance shields you from disaster, and the HSA is an awesome savings/investment vehicle.

[Ridge]

Man just wait a bit, Obama will take care of us small business owners right?

Ok seriously, we have been looking at BCBS because right now we are young and generally healthy, so the prices are not bad.

[Spry]

I'll be doing this myself soon and the high deductible + HSA seems like the way to go. The wife has covered the insurance until this coming September... she decided to stay home full time with the third kid bustin out at the end of July.

Any recommended providers that are easy to work with?

[Michael Martinez]

Here is an article from 2002 by S.C.O.R.E. (Knoxville, TN chapter) on health insurance alternatives for entrepreneurs. Some of the information may be outdated but it should give you an idea of what to look for in managing your health care costs.

Insurance is just a way for people to absorb the cost of measurable risks by sharing the expenses those risks entail. It's not well understood by many people. For example, you can sign up with an insurance policy that offers low rates only to have your rates adjusted after the company gets all your information (this often happens with small businesses that incorrectly believe you should be able to shop your insurance coverage around).

I used to be a licensed insurance agent but am no longer in the field. It's complex, to say the least. There are specialty brokerages who in turn have in-house specialists.

[Stocks]

Glad to be Canadian no worries about health insurance

[domainer]

Glad to be Canadian no worries about health insurance

Just about made the same kind of comment earlier...then I remembered how much I paid in taxes. While I love our healthcare, our taxes are out of control.

[Tea Flow]

Income taxes in Canada - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At a glance that seems fine. The taxes are higher for us in the US, but that's because we have to maintain the Empire.