Need help - Cobra Insurance vs. separate policy

[mickeysgal]

Has anyone ever not taken Cobra insurance and gone with their own health insurance policy? Where do I start to look for a personal health insurance policy that is reliable and will honor claims? Who are the reliable companies? Does anyone know anything about catastrophic health insurance policies?

DH just lost his job...we're heartbroken. The company is going through a merger where the other company is in complete control and has been letting go of droves of people. So far only 10 have been retained and over a hundred let go...and they're not done yet. Its so sad. We're trying to remain calm, but its hard.

 

[Nevergrow'nup]

Cobra, believe it or not is sometimes less expensive than individual policies. You can contact insurance company yourself to find out how much $$ it will cost. You can sometimes get into group policies with your local chamber of commerce. If you are going the self employment route there is NASE (National association for self employed)
The problem with catastrophic is that it will only cover emergencies, It will not cover immunizations for children, prescriptions, etc. If anyone has a chronic condition, this will cost you alot of $$$. Also, most will not cover pregnancy if this is an issue.
We had catastrophic ins for 5 years. Luckily, my son did not develop asthma until we had a full policy. We did okay but I am thankful that we now have full insurance.
I'm sending and to you during this time.

 

[caitycaity]

you should definitely price it out. cobra for me when i graduated from school was no bargain. i bought my own insurance through bcbs until i was able to get a job with health benefits.

 

[pixiemomma]

Yes, we elected for out own policy instead of cobra. We would have needed our own policy eventually regardless since my husband was going out on his own. I found it through insurance.com. There w ere only two options available to us Carefirst Bluecross Blueshield and some other company. We elected for BCBS since it has well-child coverage and the other company does not. We pay $290/month for 2 adults, 2 children, non-smokers, no prior health issues. We have a $2000 family deductible. $1000 individual. We have not had any problems but this is the first year we will meet at least an individual deductible due to my pregnancy.

 

[HERSEY]

Call your insurance rep where you have your auto or homeowners. They should have short term policies for your family. Blue cross Blue shield have many policies to choose from as does Nationwide ins are 2 that I can think of off the top of my head. Hopefully your husband won't be out of a job for long.

 

[ZachnElli]

My dh lost his job in Nov and we found individual policies to be much cheaper than cobra. I'm so sorry your dh lost his job. I know how hard it is!

 

[mom2boys]

You really need to do your research on this one. COBRA may be you best bet because you are still part of the former employers plan. But as you know, COBRA doesn't last forever.
Be sure you know exactly what you new plan covers. I never thought my family would be in a position to have to choose between going to the doctor or not. Under the last independent policy we had to make those choices. Each family member was allowed only two covered visits per quarter. So if I had a sinus infection & the first med didn't clear it up, I would have to return for a follow up. Bam! Maxed out on office visists for the quarter. If we paid for additional visists out of pocket, nothing remotely related to the new visit would be covered - ever. I didn't go for a well woman checkup for two years - and I'm at the age where I'm supposed to have a mammo every year.
We were also constantly getting bills from the doctors & the labs that we weren't expecting. We would pay our co-pay and 6 months to a year later we would get a notice from a collection agency that we owed money.
Just saw in the paper that another practice is no longer accepting the insurance we had. This was becoming an increasing problem.
Be extremely cautious of insurance for the "self-employed" type companies.
You can PM for the name of the insurance/association. They advertise heavily. It was not a BCBS affiliate.

 

[ducklite]

We had to pick up DS under COBRA. He's got preexisting conditions. Also his COBRA coverage covers dental and prescriptions. His out of pocket costs on the prescriptions alone would be over $500/mo and his specialist would be $125, so paying the $475/mo plus $60 in prescription copays and $20 to his doctor for a copay makes COBRA coverage a good deal.

Anne

 

[Dan Murphy]

Generally, if everyone is in good health, no ongoing pre-x, an individual policy will be less costly than COBRA. As mentioned above, BCBS is a good choice for many. Review the benefits (you can do online) vs the premiums. Try not to get to hung up on 'low end' early dollar coverages, you most often pay dearly for them, whether or not used, and if used, often barely getting back what paid. As said above, be very careful of the heavily advertised (there is one especially) self employed plans, most have 'inside limits' as mentioned. If you think/know unemployment will exist for a time (I hope not), look at a permanent plan rather than a temporary, one which is for a specified period, like 3, 6 or 12 months. Those are okay, but tricky if a claim comes up and not well and a renewal is necessary.

's

(not to be considered insurance advice)

 

[golfgal]

When DH switched jobs last fall we had about a month or so without coverage. COBRA has some extended deadlines for applying and as a result we were able to not actually take COBRA and therefore didn't have to pay the huge payments. We looked into private plans and they would have been less expensive for us but then DH's old company had terrible insurance and high rates.

In our case had we needed the coverage during that period we could have just paid the ins cost after the fact, which is legal. I would hold off until the last possible time to pay for COBRA as you MAY not need it.

 

[mickeysgal]

Thanks for all the advice. Please keep your comments and suggestions coming.

I'm having such a hard time with all of this - its hard to keep my head clear.

 

[Syrreal]

I've just recently gone through looking for private insurance. Our insurance coverage through the university (I'm a graduate student) is pretty much "we'll keep you from dying" so it got to the point where DH and I needed to get our own insurance. Initially it was because I was looking for a plan that covered maternity but then dh broke his ribs and we got stuck with being required to go to the hospital for follow up visits instead of being able to go to the clinic (one of the rules). I started by looking at esurance.com and puting all my information. They gave me a few choices but only Anthem included maternity. So then I went on the site for Anthem and priced it through their site and it came out a little cheaper than even the esurance site was.
Don't get me wrong, it's still an arm and a leg, but it really wasn't as expensive as I thought it was going to be for the 2 of us...and DH is a smoker so that made it go up a little. But atleast now we can pick ur own dr (since we chose a PPO option- they had a few including the health savings account ones) and get covered for rx etc. It turned out better for us.