I'm in need of some pointed advice searching for health insurance for Deplorable Dixie.

Things have been turned topsy turvy and I need to get her covered ASAP.

The situation in brief:

She got accepted into school a year ahead of when they said she would start, so we had to rush to deal with that change. At the end of the summer semester, she will start clinicals and be unable to work. She is currently working full time and doing full time school. She was going to work through August, then either jump on my insurance for a bit or look for something else.

Well, life happened and now we don't have til August. Her dad is having a medical emergency and she's going to have to stay with him for several months. She already had to call out a number of times to help him out, so, even though she was on the point of putting in her two weeks, she may be terminated this week. Not sure. Either way, I need to find insurance for her pronto, and she has no time to figure it out herself.

Worst option: I can shift her to my insurance with no problem, but it would raise my premium 10x, based on the current rates. Dropping down to one income earlier than we planned and eating an extra $1k expense is simply not viable. When open enrollment comes around in the fall, I could lower my coverage and we'd only be eating about a $400/month increase, but that still leaves us eating $1k/month for like 5 or 6 months. Bad solution.

Option 2: find insurance through her university.

Option 3: ???

Can the braintrust help me fill in what other options are? I'm scoping out school insurance, but I've never had to exist in the insurance marketplace because I've always had through my employer, so I don't really know where to begin.

What insurance can we get her on stat that will hopefully keep her monthly premiums under $500??

Many, many thanks for any advice.

PS: We're looking in PA, but if there's something that would be portable to NC while she cares for her dad, that would be really beneficial.

School, I believe, will be the best option, but I don’t know if you can get coverage, currently, or will have to wait until a new school year - Fall semester - starts.

Good luck.

If she gets terminated, she can get insurance through COBRA and might be another good option.

If she's college age, I think her premiums would be well below $500 if she just went and got her own insurance. She could get quotes for that pretty easy on the internet.

Looks like school she can still enroll currently, but there's no prorating, and the 2019-2020 policy year ends on 7/31, so she's pay the full monty for two months.

I've also found something called short term insurance through United Healthcare. Would this perhaps be a good stopgap between now and when the next school insurance enrollment opens? Premiums are below $100/month, but deductibles are obviously high.

She is generally healthy with basically no ongoing Rx to worry about, so is it a worthwhile risk to go low premium/high deductible?

BCBS at least here in SC offers some relatively low cost, short term insurance plans like 3 months, 6 month, 11 month being the longest. Premiums are less than $100 a month and they allow a couple doc visits at reasonable copay.

They do not renew, but can be cancelled if other insurance is obtained.

May or may not be available in your area.

Here's the SC link.

https://www.southcarolinablues...t-term-health-plans/

Look for a high deductible health plan and set up a HSA. Starting these early could allow one to self insure and potentially cover costs of assisted living at advanced age.

Part of the fail of the last healthcare shuffle was not accounting for heavy usage by minor contributors and minor usage by heavy contributors.

You get what you pay for. It is as simple as that. I kept my kids on my policy until they were 26 years of age. I am glad I chose that plan. It covered a six figure medical expense. The short term plans are limited and not all that cheap considering what they cover.

quote:

Originally posted by Oat_Action_Man:
Looks like school she can still enroll currently, but there's no prorating, and the 2019-2020 policy year ends on 7/31, so she's pay the full monty for two months.

I've also found something called short term insurance through United Healthcare. Would this perhaps be a good stopgap between now and when the next school insurance enrollment opens? Premiums are below $100/month, but deductibles are obviously high.

She is generally healthy with basically no ongoing Rx to worry about, so is it a worthwhile risk to go low premium/high deductible?

Hard to say without specifics, but high-deductable plans can be very economical. Last open enrollment i compared our high- and low- deductible options based on previous spending. I could not come up with a scenario where the low-deductible option was worth the premiums.

I actually showed my math to our benefits coordinator because I thought it must be wrong. She said since people just like the certainty of not having to pay a big deductible if something happens, and they prefer the higher premium every month.

All that's to say that the high-deductible plans can be a very good deal as long as you've got some reserves.