Finding Health Insurance | Budgeting In the Fun Stuff

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Yay, Mr. BFS and I have health insurance!!!? It actually ended up being way easier to initially find than I thought it would be, but picking the right insurance policy still was a pain in the booty.? I really dislike trying to guess at our future needs, so we just tried to find something similar to what we had and picked from there.

Using Esurance

I asked a few fellow work-from-home bloggers how they found health insurance, and Esurance kept coming up over and over again.? They do indeed make it dang easy to find a variety of plans to choose from.? Here is how I searched for us:

1.? I selected ?Health Insurance? from their drop-down menu and typed in our Zip Code.

2.? I filled out the Applicant Information screen and the part that popped up for my spouse in less than a minute.

3.? 102 plans popped up but I clicked on the tab ?Plans with Your Doctor? since I love?our doctor.

4.? That still gave me 4 different companies with over 100 options total.

5.? We narrowed down our choices by deciding to only look at similar plans to what we had.

6.? Once we found two we liked, I called our doctor the next day and made sure either plan would work and asked for a suggestion.? My doctor?s coworker said that both plans would be about the same but mentioned that one company was harder to work with than most.

7.? We decided to go with the cheaper plan that was also easier for my doctor?s office to work with and I filled out all of the info requested in less than 45 minutes.

8.? We were approved for coverage within 24 hours and it started the day after my husband?s old insurance stopped.

Our Old Health Insurance versus Our New Health Insurance

Here is a quick breakdown of the health insurance we had through my husband?s job as a school librarian.

Old Health Insurance

• $3500 annual family deductible
• $5000 additional family annual coinsurance maximum ($8500 a year maximum out of pocket)
• 20% coinsurance
• There were no copays for doctor?s visits, just coinsurance, so they just gave us $750 a year in a Health Fund to use for expenses before we started covering 20% of everything.
• Our total cost was about $500 per month.

New Health Insurance

• $5000 annual family deductible
• $4500 additional family annual coinsurance maximum ($9500 a year maximum out of pocket)
• 20% coinsurance
• Two $30 doctor?s visits per year and the 20% coinsurance thereafter.? I asked my doctor?s assistant about regular costs of visits ? they would range from $80 for a sore throat to $200 if some tests needed to be ran for an infection.
• Our total cost is now $310 per month.

My Thoughts Overall

As long as we keep at least $10,000 a year on hand for health emergencies, we are good to go.? Plus we are now saving about $2280 per year in health insurance premiums, which will make up for that loss of $750 upfront.? Prescription drugs may cost a little more for non-generics, but even if the costs double (worst-case scenario based on what drugs I could look up that we have ever been prescribed), we?d only be looking at $1000 a year extra or less, which still keeps our total costs?cheaper overall.

The only draw back to non-employee health care is that normal pregnancies would not be covered at all.? Just in case we do ever decide to have a baby, I looked into the costs in this area, and if we pay for the visits and delivery costs in cash, we could cover everything with about $5000.? And if anything goes abnormally, our insurance kicks in anyway for any surgery to fix me or the baby.

So, overall, I am happy.? We are insured.? We already keep $10,000 on hand for emergencies like medical problems, so this will work fine for us.? If we stay healthy, woot!? If we don?t, we can afford the consequences. All in all, I am satisfied.

Have you ever had to find your own health insurance?? Was the process similar?

Source: http://www.budgetinginthefunstuff.com/finding-health-insurance/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=finding-health-insurance

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