How can I arrange for bulletproof independent health insurance?
From the NPR article you linked to: It happens with individual health insurance policies, where people apply for insurance on their own, not through their employers. The opposite of the individual policy is the group policy (what employers offer). Group policies have a variety of special protections under HIPAA which aren’t present for individual policies. For example, if you directly transition from one group policy to another you can’t be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. When I got into the position that I was going to need my own insurance I did research and found out about “small group policies” which are the ones offered to small businesses, usually ones with less than 20 employees. On top of the federal HIPAA protections there are state laws in every state that require insurers to offer small group policies for companies down to a certain
MattD is mostly correct, but his assertion that because this is “real” insurance that premiums must be higher than expected claims is not entirely accurate. Insurers know that not every policy is going to be profitable. How close to the line they choose to run on the ones that are is a matter of underwriting judgment–and state regulation–but it is known and accepted that certain policies are just going to be losers. Second, group health is “real” insurance too. I really don’t know what he means by suggesting it isn’t. The main difference between individual and group health is that with individual policies, the insured pays the entire cost after taxes rather than have the employer pay part, with the employee’s participation using pre-tax dollars. Groups do negotiate so that everyone in the group pays the same premium (or has a choice from one of several options), but there are plenty of off-the-shelf health insurance products with uniform premium levels. I’ve participated in one mysel
