Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Will Health Insurance Rates Rise Now?

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I’m not an expert on health care, health insurance, and certainly not on the way that government works.  But, I like to think that I have some modicum of common sense.  So, it’s with great trepidation that I see this health care bill.

My biggest concern is the cost of health insurance.  My company covers a significant portion of our health insurance, but if rates rise, they very well could pass that expense on to us.  If that happened, I don’t know if we could afford it.

Many people are lauding this bill and saying how great it is that people can’t be denied because of pre-existing conditions and that there is no more cap on payouts.  Yes and no.  Yes, I think there should be something available to even those with pre-existing conditions.  But there already was!  Now, the insurance agencies are going to be forced to cover them just the same as their low risk customers.  I don’t have any solid numbers, but my math says that will make my rates go up.

Does anyone else understand any of that differently?

My Wife Quit Her Job: The Hits Keep On Rolling

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It would appear that the saga is far from over.  (If you want the full story, you can read part 1 of My Wife Quit Her Job) Just when you think you can’t handle any more of a challenge, a little more gets thrown on top.  Obviously, God knows we can handle more.

Since my wife quit her job, we’ve been paying for Cobra health insurance to continue with the coverage that we had.  It was a bit of an increase since you pay for the company portion as well as what you would have normally paid, but we had already met our deductible and it pays 100% after that.  That full coverage bit helped us justify the extra couple of hundred that we had to pay each month.  But earlier this week, we got a letter from my wife’s former employer that informed us that the cost of the insurance would be going up and that beginning on the 1st of September we would have to pay that.

I probably don’t have to tell you that the increase puts an even deeper kink in our financial situation.  We may have to lose the 100% coverage in exchange for the plan that I get from work.  It’s only marginally cheaper than the original Cobra price, but even more so now that we’ve been hit with this increase.  The only part I haven’t worked out is if we would be better off keeping the Cobra coverage until the end of the year.  Any new deductible that we might have to meet may offset any extra premiums that we would have to pay.  Decisions, Decisions.

On a brighter note, the business that my wife and her friends started is still doing well.  She’s even expecting to get her first paycheck from the new company this month!  Certainly not a full paycheck, but getting closer.