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Health Insurance On the Intertrons
powerss
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Where is a non-shady place to buy my own personal health insurance?
Websites please.
Websites please.
powerss on
0
Posts
What level of coverage are you looking for and how much per month are you looking to spend?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Under $400 a month would be fine.
Well you have a ton of options, then. Blue Cross / Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, Aetna, HealthNet, United / Pacificare (and others) all offer low-copay, low-deductible individual packages with dental and vision. Just get quotes from everybody you can. Look at each plan's provider lists for your area, too - you want to be sure there are a lot of doctors nearby who are in the plan's network. www.ehealthinsurance.com is an easy way to get quotes from lots of carriers at once.
Last question: do you currently have a doctor? If you do, find out what insurance networks he's in and focus one getting quotes from them.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Any opinions on Kaiser? I thought that was for poor blokes.
It is not like it is going to cover catastrophic stuff, that would be under you medical anyway.
Not necessarily.
Kaiser is an HMO, which means they employ doctors directly. You have to get your care from Kaiser doctors and Kaiser hospitals and your medications from Kaiser pharmacies.
The drawback is that you get limited choice in choosing your doctor. The advantage is that it's relatively easy to get an appointment with a specialist (as long as your primary doctor is willing to give you a referral), and most of the time you can get all your care from the same facility (no running around town from the doctor to the blood lab to the radiology center). The other advantage is that any doctor you see has direct access to your medical records (with your permission of course); this can streamline treatment.
The rest of this post is my personal opinion. Other people may have had other experiences. I know a number of people on Kaiser, and Kaiser is great if what's wrong with you is a well-known disease with established treatment protocols that work for you. Kaiser is awesome if you develop adult diabetes or skin cancer, for instance. They're also pretty good about preventative care. However, if your illness is not so well-understood (say, drug-resistant migraines), or if the cause has not been identified (fibromyalgia, for instance), or if standard treatment protocols don't work for you (like if you have multiple drug allergies) Kaiser's system breaks down. Treatment is partially defined by protocols set by medical directors working at the corporate level, so individual doctors don't deviate much from one another in their treatment plans. I can't tell you the number of times a few people I know who have exotic conditions have been turned away by multiple Kaiser doctors saying, "Your problem must just be stress" or "There's nothing I can do for you," only to go on to a private non-Kaiser doctor who was willing to take an unconventional approach and was able to identify (and in a couple of cases actually treat) whatever the weird illness was.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.