Comments on: Is Cobra health insurance worth it?

By: davea0511

davea0511 — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:02:58 +0000

Ditto. When I found myself unemployed 6 years ago (before starting my own business) I had a number of people encourage me to keep COBRA stating that it was such a good deal because it’s purchased in bulk and I reap the benefits. I was shocked when I ran the numbers … it is NOT a good deal.

I did like you, and got what I thought was catastrophic only … turned out to NOT be catastrophic, only high deductible. Watch out for those. I just found that out … 6 years later … thank heavens no catastrophic costs occurred. Am now looking for good catastrophic-only, but having little success. Insurance agents aren’t interested in helping people like us, I’m assuming because they make very little money off us. The insurance industry make money off the nickel and dimes and with catastrophic there are no nickels and dimes. The profit is much leaner, which is good for us, bad for insurance companies.

Want to know why universal insurance is trying to be comprehensive? Many reasons, but the biggest is that it provides the most opportunity for insurance companies to still be involved and make a living, imho.

By: ppo Dental Plans

ppo Dental Plans — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:09:27 +0000

Thank you for the educational article! Very interesting and useful info!!! Check also this LookDentalPlans.com site.

By: chrisrodde

chrisrodde — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:58:10 +0000

Thanks this is great insight.

By: Jo

Jo — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:25:35 +0000

You left out one important detail. Some catastrophic-only health insurance plans do not count as “creditable coverage.” Such a plan is not fully portable which means that, when switching to another plan, there may be exclusions of preexisting conditions for up to 18 months. Creditable coverage is a bit hard to understand, certainly harder than it should be.

Your health insurance provider can tell you if the plan you’re on (or considering) counts as creditable coverage. I recommend only creditable coverage, especially for families.

Some reading:
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq_consumer_hipaa.html
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/consumerhipaa.pdf

BTW, your decision on dental makes sense for another reason — most dental plans do not cover dental catastrophies, the very reason you normally get insurance. Dental insurance is basically a way for large companies to provide an extra pre-tax benefit for employees and make no sense for individuals.

By: Shannon Kenney

Shannon Kenney — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:02:06 +0000

Hi, I saw that you were discussing COBRA insurance. I have a website dedicated to COBRA questions and answers and I thought it might help you. Or, if you want you can call me and I can maybe answer your questions. 608-755-7959

By: Amir M

Amir M — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:41:01 +0000

I actually work for eHealthInsurance. Thanks for visiting our site, and for the mention on your blog. In case you have other readers who are in your position, I thought I would just add that we recently launched a site dedicated to educating people about COBRA and their COBRA alternatives. Check it out at http://www.cobralearning.com.

Amir M, licensed agent