Full Moon

This has been one of those weeks . . . and it is only Tuesday.

A woman paying $800 per month for health insurance says she cannot afford to keep her policy. She has 4 different policies, one for each of her family members. Each one has a different deductible, ranging from $1000 to $2500.

She now wants everyone covered under one policy and is willing to boost her risk to $5000.

I give her a price that will cover her husbands pre-existing condition, his tobacco use, and her size 16 body.

She says that price is too high compared to one she got off the internet.

I am familiar with this carrier. They will not cover her husbands pre-existing condition, they will rate her for her weight (something my quote already considered) and the have a limit of $5,000 on prescription meds.

She doesn’t care about my observations. She already has a better price. Besides, her meds don’t run anywhere close to $5,000 per year.

I point out it doesn’t matter what you paid in the past, the reason for buying insurance is to cover things that could happen in the future. Since I have 3 clients whose Rx bill runs in excess of $2,000 per month, I feel I might know a bit about this topic.

She also says she has never heard of the carrier I have quoted. That’s OK because they probably never heard of her either.

She is 42 years old.

The carrier I quoted is over 100 years old and has always specialized in health insurance.

The carrier with the lower price has not been in the individual health insurance business for at least 15 years.

She still wants the lower price plan.

You get what you pay for. If that is her decision nothing I do is going to change her mind.

Woman number 2 tells me she doesn’t have health insurance. Her husband is covered under a plan at work but he is leaving that job and needs coverage.

They can’t afford more than $350 per month.

Her children don’t need health insurance, they are on the state welfare health plan.

This should have been my first clue things won’t turn out the way I want them to.

She has pre-existing conditions, and she cannot afford her asthma medication.

She also has Lupus but claims it has been in remission for 20 years. She also claims she has had no treatment in the last 10 years for Lupus.

I show her a plan for $360 that will cover her asthma meds. Since her Lupus is outside the boundaries of the questions on the application, she should be good to go.

She likes the plan and wants to talk it over with her husband.

I follow up the next day.

Her husband said they cannot afford a $5,000 deductible.

I quote her a $10,000 deductible for $70 less.

No, she says. They cannot afford to pay $5,000 if they had a serious illness.

How much can you afford?

Maybe $1,000.

OK, that plan is $800 per month.

We can’t afford $800.

What can you afford?

About $350.

I have a plan with a $5,000 deductible for $360. It will cover your medicine with a $35 copay.

We will just set up a savings account. The only thing we need insurance for is for a doctor visit once or twice a year and my medicine.

What if something bad happens and you run up a $40,000 bill?

We will fill bankruptcy. We have done it before and will just have to do it again.

So it is better to lose everything than cover all but $5,000 of your medical bills for a $360 per month premium?

Yes.

I just looked at the calendar.

It is a full moon.

That explains it.

This entry was posted on March 14, 2006 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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