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Health Insurance When Leaving the Corporate World?
An anonymous reader writes "I've been working at a large company since I got out of college, so I didn't have to give much thought to getting my own healthcare plan. Now I'm thinking about leaving the corporate world and starting out on my own. I have a family now, so I need to make sure we're going to be covered should anything happen. Researching online turns up horror stories of people trying to get individual healthcare plans, or getting denied coverage on plans they thought they had. Does anyone else have experience going through this and what you've had to deal with, or am I making too big a deal of it?"
Move to any 1st world country not the USA.
There is no step 2.
1) Don't get sick
2) Die quickly
Depends on the province; it's often free no matter what your situation is. Contrary to Republican scare ads, it's also of excellent quality provided that you don't go to the emergency room for a cold or a stubbed toe.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Supposedly one of the strengths of the U.S. economy is its ability to rapidly adapt to changes. This has been used to justify the lack of job protections for workers. But as the poster has shown, having health insurance tied to your employer obstructs the kind of entrepreneurism that's part of our rapid adaptation.
I don't understand why this argument hasn't come up during the health-care debates. It would have let Democrats position themselves as pro-economy.
If this doesn't highlight the problems with the US health insurance system, nothing will. You had to trade 15 hours a week of your life simply to be able to live a healthy life. That sounds an awful lot like indentured servitude to me.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I'll tell you a fact from a Canadian perspective of a middle class person. For all the complaining about the "death panels" we actually don't have here (vs. your for-profit insurance companies you guys do have) and saying that we have to wait forever (which we don't, prioritized: if you need it you get it *now*), when the average Canadian looks at the situation the average US'ian is in: we feel HORROR. God people, how can you choose to do nothing about it?
Shh.
[Move to Canada] and enjoy universal health care for about $100 per month for a family of 4, unless you can show economic hardship, and then it's free.
With all due respect, and I really don't mean this as a troll, but you aren't just paying $100 a month -- you simply cannot afford any medical system for that sum (even if you weren't screwed like the States into paying stupid large administrative costs) . In reality, a large fraction of the money for the health care system comes from taxes which you are ultimately going to pay.
I am a big proponent of some form of public healthcare but I dislike the fact that many of the people here in the US that are arguing for it will not acknowledge that it's simply going to expensive. They point to the naive out-of-pocket expense in Canada or The Netherlands without acknowledging the true cost of the system in the form of higher taxes. My position is that we can and should afford such expense but one does not do any favors to the debate by dissembling about the cost. If anything, it's ammunition to opponents that can point to your dishonesty in selling the plan.
There is no free lunch and there is definitely no first-world healthcare for $100/family/month. The closer figure it probably $650/family/month. Again, I believe it's a fine way to spend that money (and we are affluent enough to afford it) so I'm not approaching this from a position of ideological opposition, only one of demanding honesty from everyone.
Cite: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_spe_per_per-health-spending-per-person. The exact numbers are highly debatable, especially since we don't know how much various plans will change the cost structure here in the US but $100/f/m is simply unreasonable.
These responses of move to "XYZ" or move out of the US that are modded "insightful" is simple flamebait and does not help the questioner or add anything new to the discussion.
We get it, lefties. You don't like the US's health care system. Get over it. This guy is not going to move out of the USA simply because of health insurance.
Pfft. So in your view the whole world is 'left', and the US is 'centre' or something?
In the US the insurance profits aren't actually all that much money. The real issue is that there is overhead EVERYWHERE.
Your doctor probably employs 1-2 people to do billing, because of the complexity of reimbursement. Your doctor nearly employs a lawyer as well with their malpractice premiums.
Your insurance company has 10x more people than it really needs - those don't count as profit, but they certainly bring cost.
Your hospital charges 10x what anything actually costs, because they have all the costs above and also have to provide "free" care to the indigent.
The tort and pay-for-service system guarantees that everybody is getting more treatment and especially more testing than they actually need.
Throw in another dozen issues similar to these and we can see why US health care is so expensive. Everybody likes to point at one thing and call it "the problem" but the whole system is one big mess. Most proposals to "fix" it amount to just shuffling money around so that people don't see the bills.
Truly deranged thinking is that paying twice as much (per capita) while covering half as many people as other countries is good healthcare and worth keeping.
The insurance companies hold all the cards.
Look at how the rates are climbing even as their profits are.
They are squeezing the last drop from your wallet because they know a single payer system is inevitable.
If you're going to be sick, you'd better not do it in the 'States. Its no place for you if you flinch at the thought of suing somebody who's only sin was being weak once (as we ALL are at least 15% of our lives.)
Other countries' health care systems may not be perfect but at least they exist.
The 'States have nothing even resembling a humane health care system.
What they have is health-don't-care systems.
Health care for profit is an oxymoron.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The doctors could even make house calls if you had a sick child. A wonderful system, and about half the cost of our monstrosity.
Think global, act loco
Liberty means death?
:-D
Brainwashed socialists
Only Americans, can, after cutting their taxes on the upper class thereby shifting the burden of society onto the lower and middle classes, and then giving the upper class big bonuses for almost destroying the country, only Americans can complain about socialism for the middle and lower classes.
Socialism for the upper class is entirely acceptable in their brainwashed "Liberty to die" culture.
If you can't afford to help your countrymen get health care, how can you afford to fight multiple major wars and lower taxes at the same time?
The only problem with the Republican viewpoint on government spending is that it doesn't make any fucking sense.
And earlier this month Rep. John Murtha of Pa., while in the care of the most expensive health care system in the world, died after a simple gallbladder operation was botched.
Fixed that for you.