Health Insurance
Yeah, I’m insured !! Took me a couple months to sit down and decide what to do, but i finally did it a couple weeks ago and today i got my insurance card in the mail. Hurray. For the record, I spent a half day doing it – reading up on stuff, picking a plan, and applying. For a single healthy guy like me, it wasn’t that hard. Plans start around $60/month and go up past $400/month. There are also tons of sites that let you compare different plans, form the major players to smaller insurance companies. I liked eHealthInsurance.com the best – i applied on 9/7, they sent me email a week later saying i was approved, and got my card a week after that.
The plan i picked is the “PPO Share 2500” plan from Blue Cross of California. For me, thats about $127/month (price is based on location, age, and deductible – see the PDF). That’s a $2,500 deductible, with a $7,500 out-of-pocket limit, $35 copay for doctor visits, $10 copay for generic drugs, and a 30% coinsurance for most other things. That means after i’ve spent $2,500 of my hard-earned cash, Insurance will start to cover 70% of the bill on most things till i’ve spent $7,500, and then they should cover it all. Well, let’s hope so – there’s lots of fine print, not to mention blue cross is shady
Note that this does not include dental or vision – dental was about an extra $30/month, not sure what VSP would have been. I just saw dentist and eye doctor in the spring, i figure i could go a little bit without those. After all, i’m really just getting insurance for catastrophic things that might cost $100,000 or more to fix – i’m not really interested in having insurance pay for little things like teeth cleaning or another pair of glasses. Now I can go do dangerous things like burningman and hike half dome .. oh wait, i already did that.