Bye bye COBRA

We finally got private health insurance.  No more COBRA.  For those of you who don’t know, COBRA is the extension of group health insurance from your previous employer after you no longer work there.  The good news is you have health insurance.  The bad news is you get to pay the full cost.  It’s usually expensive and my case was no exception.  We had great coverage, but the premiums were significant.

The whole health insurance business is a mess.  I’m not holding out much hope for the next president to do much about it either.  For those of you thinking about leaving a day job to go self-employed, my advice is to have one person in the family keep a day job that provides health benefits.  Since my wife and I are both self-employed, we had to find our own insurance.

Here are a couple other bits of advice from my recent experience:

1. For individual plans, health insurance companies can reject you for any reason.  Get over it.  At least this is the case in the state of Ohio.  There may be states where this is different.
2. Don’t go to the doctor for any reason, even wellness visits, for at least a year before you make the switch.  The longer the better.  Absolutely every visit to the doctor is a red flag to the insurance companies.  Logic would say that they’d want to know what they’re taking on.  The reality is, every visit to the doctor gives the insurance companies one more reason to reject you.  You might think it’s a good idea to get that lingering issue taken care of before changing insurance plans, but think again.
3. Find an independent insurance agent who specializes in health insurance.  You need help filling out the forms.  Trust me on this.
4. Start your application process early and expect it to take a long time.  Prepare to be rejected at least once.
5. If all else fails, have at least 2 people in your own company and get a group health plan.  For a group plan, the insurance company can’t reject anyone.  They just charge more.  So, group plans are more expensive, but they do provide coverage if you can’t get it any other way.  By working closely with our agent, we were able to avoid this route.
6. Consider a part time job that provides benefits.  My wife and I were close to drawing straws to see which of us would go work 20 hours a week at Starbucks just so we could get benefits.