Health insurance advice.....

[laserpat]

Shopping health insurance. Self employed, good health. Who's good? Who to avoid? tia

[fudgie]

I have Signature Care through work. Really good to us. Kit had Aetna. It sucked.

[catfish]

We have to change health insurance at work. We had principal.  My understanding is we in TX have only 3 choices  Blue cross blue shield, United Healthcare,and Aetna.  Everyone else has pulled out.  So far BCBS has the better offer of the three.

[Kidd]

I called the hospital   several years back, asked to speak  to someone in billing ,asked the lady  what Ins. company she thought was  best at paying  and so on , she  told me BCBS  by far , she used them as well.
So , I have been with BCBS for 8 years .

How's that ?

Kidd

[LandElephant]

As a self employed individual I had to go find insurance.  I went  to einsurance and looked at a lot of policies and settled on Humana for this year (In TX). I travel a lot and although I don't use it much I had to consider cost, coverage, and what out of pocket expenses I was willing to cover.

As a C Corp I cover my cost through my hourly pricing for the work that I do.  I divided the cost by 160 hours and added some out of pocket cost as my fudge factor.

I don't know if that helps, but they had the most different plans.  No problems yet, but ....... who knows. It's a crap shoot right now.

Charlie Morse
Land Elephant

[Bob E.]

Insurance sucks and they are all rip-offs.  But you can't hardly live without it.  The main things to look at are the networks of the plans you are considering.  I work in Pittsburgh and we have several top ranked hospitals here.  At work, we had United...and none of the 3 main hospitals even took United.  I never had a problem where I needed it, but still...if something had happened, I could have been screwed.

Just this month, we switched to Blue Cross Blue Shield and the network is alot better.  Pretty much everyone is in network.  And if it matters to you at all, BCBS is a non-profit insurance company, which might count for something...but that doesn't mean they are all that great either.  I read an article about them where they pay as little as 65% of premiums towards health care.  The rest went to overhead, salaries/bonuses, and capital expansion (new office complexes).

[kybigmac]

most hosp. wont take united because they take forever to pay or deny claim. worst ins. I ever had!

[MacDragon]

I have BCBS and DentalBlue through my work... They cover me and my significant other/Domestic Partner... I was glad to get her on it because she doesn't have an outside job w/ insurance... so she is on mine.  All I had to prove is that she has lived with me for over a year (I think... might have been two).

Ive had a few minor injuries and they paid out. 

Someone else here said that they are all a rip-off and it's probably true for the most part.  But, I haven't had any problems with BlueCross/BlueShield...

My 2 cents.

[f-Stop]

Hey Pat,

I'm on Humana.  Run it through my company.  Just started third year.  I like the coverage, but will probably will have to go shopping next year.

Call me if you need more info...

Charlie

[BF]

BCBS of Alabama is freakin' great.  I had them through work during my kidney cancer ordeal.  They were great to work with too....very friendly and helpful.  


Company later changed to BCBS of Florida.  Absolutly horrible......wouldn't pay for anything, denied everything.....were great at taking your money.  There was such an uproar from the employees that the company dumped BCBS of Florida and went with BCBS of Maryland.  They're Ok, a world of difference better than BCBS of Florida, but not as great as BCBS of Alabama was.  The company screwed the pooch on that one.