Finding affordable health insurance was one of the biggest obstacles we faced when I quit my job. My husband is a self-employed performing artist (juggler\/musician). We had always relied on my job to pay for our insurance.<\/p>\n
Health Insurance is a complicated issue. We knew we needed to have health insurance because without it we could face financial ruin; but I didn’t want health insurance to stop me from quitting a job<\/a> I hated to pursue my dream of working for myself.<\/strong><\/p>\n Before I quit, I spent hours researching different health care options. This post is about what I learned.<\/p>\n There were so many plans with so many options it was hard to keep everything straight. Our best option was to keep my newborn son on a separate plan. It would allow him to have much better coverage and let my husband and me purchase a cheaper plan for us, to save money.<\/p>\n At that point we lived in the state of New Hampshire. There was a program through the state that allowed you to buy in to their insurance program for kids. The coverage was excellent. At the time the payment was about $100 per month for just my son.<\/p>\n The plans for my husband and me were limited and expensive. I spoke to a few qualified agents. I researched and found reviews on the internet. I needed to make sure the plan fit our budget, had benefits that fit us, and had a good reputation.<\/p>\n It seemed like we had two options:<\/p>\n With the high deductible plan, we could also sign up for a Health Savings Account. An HSA is a savings account that allows individuals to save for medical expenses tax-deferred.<\/p>\n We seemed like perfect candidates for the high-deductible plan. We were 25 years old and very healthy. We rarely went to the doctors. We were frugal and could pay attention to the cost of our health care.<\/p>\n In 2007, a high-deductible plan for two adults was $192 per month with a $5,000 deductible. We had over $20,000 in our emergency fund, so we figured we could pay for most health emergencies. Our total cost per month for health insurance for our family would be $292.<\/p>\n After thinking about it more, I realized I had to take into account the possible loss of income too. If my husband injured his hand, he couldn’t juggle. If either of us had a serious injury and couldn’t work, we’d need our emergency fund to pay for bills. We decided to save an additional $5,000 to put in our HSA to help with that risk.<\/p>\n We had the plan for a year before I realized we were losing money<\/strong>. I had signed up for the preventative option so we could have regular health check-ups covered for my son. It turned out that the option had a cap of $200 per year. I was paying an extra $22 per month. That meant I was losing at least $64 per year.<\/p>\n I thought I had inspected every inch of that plan. There were just too many options and rules. Needless to say, I canceled the preventive option.<\/p>\n When we moved to Maine, we had to find new insurance. I had to spend hours researching again. There are only three health insurance companies here, and the premiums are a lot more expensive because Maine doesn’t discriminate. Everyone has the ability to get coverage.<\/p>\n The high-deductible plan and HSA seemed to work well before. Since the prices were so much higher here (our previous plan would have been almost $600 per month), we increased our deductible to $10,000. To avoid more risk, we increased the amount of money in our HSA to $10,000. Our current plan costs $483 for a family of four. (We welcomed a new little girl last year!)<\/p>\n Having a high deductible means we have to pay for doctors visits. Many people I talk with have no<\/i> idea what a doctor’s visit costs. A normal doctor visit costs us $92. If we pay within 21 days, we receive a 10% discount.<\/p>\n I’ve realized how great it is to pay attention to costs. I feel so much more involved in the process of our health. My daughter’s doctor wanted to do a test, so I asked how much it would cost. She said that she never looks at the cost of the procedures. The test was $2,000 and it wasn’t medically necessary.<\/b> If a procedure is important to your health, you need to spend money on it; but I was able to save $2,000 because I did my due diligence to research and ask for second opinions about my daughters care.<\/p>\n Last year we spent about $2,800 on medical expenses. That included all wellness visits for my one-year-old daughter, about seven appointments for illnesses, and two emergency room visits.<\/p>\n Figuring out what fit for us has been a learning process. Since I can’t predict the future, I don’t know if this plan will fit us 100%. If I have a big disaster come up and my plan lacks adequate coverage, I’ll have to learn from it and adjust.<\/p>\n There’s a delicate balance of living the life you want and mitigating risk. I’m still finding the balance, but I do my best to keep my family debt-free, healthy and living the life we want.<\/p>\n Do you have any ideas or suggestions for my plan?<\/strong> What has worked for you, and what hasn’t?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Finding affordable health insurance was one of the biggest obstacles we faced when I quit my job. My husband is a self-employed performing artist (juggler\/musician). We had always relied on my job to pay for our insurance.<\/p>\n Health Insurance is a complicated issue. We knew we needed to have health insurance because without it we could face financial ruin; but I didn’t want health insurance to stop me from quitting a job<\/a> I hated to pursue my dream of working for myself.<\/strong><\/p>\n Before I quit, I spent hours researching different health care options. This post is about what I learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[504,485],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span>Finding the Right Health Insurance Plan<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n
<\/span>A Problem with the Plan<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>New State, New Insurance<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>Paying for Visits<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>A Learning Process<\/span><\/h2>\n