Point, click, insure

[question everything]

Sunday, July 25, 2004

For some people, finding health insurance through an online broker may be the best way to obtain affordable coverage.

By MARY ANN MILBOURN
The Orange County Register

(snip)

Seeking health insurance on the Internet is a strategy more people are adopting as costs rise. Health-insurance premiums for California workers with employer coverage grew 15.8 percent in 2003, according to the most recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust. That was seven times the rate of inflation.

(snip)

Online health insurance sites have several advantages: They are simple to use, make comparisons easy, and may save money on premiums... Online insurance brokers aren't fly-by-night Internet start-ups. They include:

eHealthInsurance.com, which was one of the first online health insurance brokers, dating back to 1997;

www.insure.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quotesmith.com Inc., which started offering insurance quotes in 1984 and later moved to the Internet;

www.QuickQuote.com, which began offering online health insurance quotes in 1995 and is now owned by Dutch financial giant ING;

www.assurant.com, which is run by Assurant, a longtime provider of short-term and student health insurance plans formerly known as Fortis Inc.

More...

http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/07/25/sections/business/business/article_179106.php

[Eurobabe]

1. thanks so much for posting this!

my hubby just got laid off, we have healthcare coverage through 8/31, but after that ??? COBRA is going to be over $700 a month.

I just got a quote through Assurant, that we can get 6 MONTHS coverage with $250 deductible for less than $1000. And we get to keep our doctor!

Thanks again! C4C

[question everything]

2. You are welcome

For over five years now, I have been paying for my own health insurance - started at $200 a month and now at $250 - since I was getting tired of going through employer-sponsored coverage and expensive COBRA and back through jobs again. And I have stuck to this even though both our employers have been offering insurance.

This way, I hope, I don't have go through underwriting once I got it while still healthy. Unfortunately, in contrast to employers, I cannot deduct the cost of insurance until it, plus regular health care expenses, are more than 7.5% of our income

Frankly, I don't think that employers belong in providing "benefits": retirement and health insurance. I think that they should pay us whatever it is they pay the insurance companies and let us shop for the best coverage; and let us enact laws that make it very hard for them to drop us, and let us enact laws that they have to pay into a state or a federal pool for those of us that can no longer afford private coverage. And let us deduct those expenses, at least some of them the way self employed and employers do.

Employers can and do have access to our health information and this is none of their business. And employers do change providers and we have to change our doctors as they do.

Or.... just enact a universal coverage for all of us while still letting those who want, pay for their own.