Health Insurance Question

[brotha 0]

Hi, me and my Fiance will be getting Married within the next 2 weeks.

I had a question about health insurance; the insurance from my work is quite expensive.

In most threads I read here people have their wife covered under their work health insurance plan.

If you are not making very much money is there an alternate way of getting insurance?

Does she have to be on my plan or can i just get her any health plan by shopping around? The plans i see

online are in the $50.00 per month range which is MUCH cheaper then the one offered at my company.

I heard somewhere that you can get health insurance for free for your wife if you make below a certain $$$

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Penguin_ie 5,994]

Yes you can get private health insurance. Employer paid health insurance is usually significantly cheaper though, for the same coverage. The cheapo health insurance you mention is likely only for major emergencies, or is a discount card rather than actual health insurance.

[christeen 966]

Agreed... Be VERY aware of what you are buying when it comes to the cheapo health insurance. ... Most are just catastrophic plans and have HUGE deductibles, do not cover doctor visits or any medicine. Buying the cheap catastrophic care is certainly an option that many millions of people have to decide because of financial costs... But just be aware of what exactly it is covering.

One option that I have had several friends in financial situations do is to buy to the cheaper insurance so, god forbid, they are protected in case of something major... But they also checked around locally and found a doctor that was willing to accept them in case of routine care (cold, sinus, flu etc...) at a set, reasonable price ($125-$150 for an office visit is a reasonable range).

You are not alone in this situation... Millions are with you and have put lots of info online so do some searches and compare, compare, compare! Just remember that a broken arm and a trip to the ER can easily run $10,000 or a kidney stone $20,000 ... So do your homework, it will be worth the extra time and research with just one incident. And keep in mind, everything is local... What is offered in one place is not necessarily offered where you are.

[brotha 0]

Do you guys recommend any specific insurance plan?

I have never shopped for one before and barely know where to start in determining what is good / bad.

It doesn't have to be the cheapest, just something reasonable.

Currently my work is charging something around $300-400 a month. This is really quite expensive...

[Penguin_ie 5,994]

$300 for two people? That is cheap, assuming coverage is decent.

[brotha 0]

$300 for two people? That is cheap, assuming coverage is decent.

no that is in addition to mine.

[Love's JAA 100]

Remember also, through your employer, you pay pretax on the premiums, saving you income and social security/medicare taxes. You buy on your own, you won't get that same benefit.

[J J Moose 3]

Agreed. It's really hard to find anything with decent coverage and without a super high dedcutible for less than $300-$400 per month. Stuff that only covers major medical (such as a car accident or a hug surgery) may be have cheaper premiums, but it's a bit of a gamble- small incidents can really add up.

As for "free" insurance, I"m not sure what you are referring to other than state run insurance programs for low-income residents. That varies by state and my understanding is that your wife wouldn't be eligible for them anyway, since you had to fill out I-864 affadavits of support (either on your own or with a joint sponsor) that showed adequate income to keep her from becoming a public charge. That means that the income of your wife's sponsors would be included in her income when filling out the paperwork to receive means-tested benefits, including health insurance and it would most likely place her in too high an income bracket to receive assistance.

Here are some links that might prove helpful in shopping for insurance:

Choosing a healthcare plan

Healthcare.gov

[mai95 4]

Hi, me and my Fiance will be getting Married within the next 2 weeks.

I had a question about health insurance; the insurance from my work is quite expensive.

In most threads I read here people have their wife covered under their work health insurance plan.

If you are not making very much money is there an alternate way of getting insurance?

Does she have to be on my plan or can i just get her any health plan by shopping around? The plans i see

online are in the $50.00 per month range which is MUCH cheaper then the one offered at my company.

I heard somewhere that you can get health insurance for free for your wife if you make below a certain $$$

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Your employer may have a time limit when you can enroll her, usually it is withing 30/60 days of a qualifing event (marriage, birth etc.) so check with your employer

And the cost per month is only part of the health insurance, co-pays, % of total bill, annual diductables, all that need to be taken into account when choosing live insurance.

[christeen 966]

Do some comparative searches... A lot I'd dependent on where you live. But you hopefully should be able to find something decent for her in the $200 per month range with Cigna or Aetna ... This is with about a $2500 deductible and $40 office visits... Do a search for compare individual health insurance rates (they will ask you zip code) and then most sites have a "compare plans" option so you can look at them side to side. Then determine what you can afford as well as consider what you can pay/risk in the event of something big happening... It is a tough choice but your best advice is to arm yourself with information and just look and compare...

[TBoneTX 45,498]

The above ideas are all good. If you have trouble finding insurance but want to minimize out-of-pocket "routine" expenses and you live in a big city with a large ethnic population, consider some of the clinics that cater to that market. Not far from where we live is a Hispanic area a couple of blocks long. A walk-in clinic charges $35 for appointments, $25 for vaccinations, and (it appears) set amounts for common ailments. I poked my head in there once, and the place was spotless; the medical staff were clean-cut, and there were diplomas on the walls.

By virtue of my employer's insurance plan, I have no current need to take Mrs. T-B. or Mini-Bone there, but if one of Mrs. T-B.'s relatives were to get sick while visiting us, I wouldn't hesitate to go there. I wish that I'd known about it when Mrs. T-B. first arrived in the U.S., very ill -- we went to a clinic inside a drugstore and got bitten hard in the pocketbook.

The above isn't exactly what you asked, but if a need for a regular office visit comes up while you're shopping for insurance or waiting for a plan to take effect, it's an option.