CELEBRATING MEDICAL INSURANCE: MY ONE THOUSANDTH POST CELEBRATION

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Franklin agreed to give up Franklin Friday because, as promised, I'm presenting my top ten most popular posts as part of my one thousandth post celebration. This post was first published on June 16th, 2012. I'm happy to report I now have an account at healthcard.gov, and I qualify for a $125/month subsidy. Here's "Medical Insurance," with 851 page views.

It's #6 on my top ten hits list:

Dear Friends,

I'm in a medical insurance conundrum. I'd like to tell you my problem, and I would appreciate your advice. I'm sure many of you have more experience with making insurance decisions than I do.

Here's the situation: I have COBRA until November, but it costs about $635/month, which is putting me in debt. It's good coverage, especially with the prescriptions I need, but I certainly don't have $600/month in medical bills.

I spoke to an agent at a large well-known insurance company. She said that an individual policy would cost me about $1,000/month. Yikes!

I'm not proposing that I give up medical insurance altogether, but I see online ads all the time for health insurance options. So today I decided to respond to an email offering a health insurance quote. I spoke to an agent at multiplan.com.  He said that I could get insurance through a group plan by joining an organization. The insurance would cost about $330/month. If what this man said is true, then the prescription coverage is quite good, and office visits are pretty well covered.

I told him I wanted him to send me information in the mail so I could go over it with Favorite Young Man and make a decision. He said he didn't have a conventional policy to send to me, but I could Google U.S. Health to get more information.

Now, here's the bad stuff I found. I Googled U.S. Health and found nothing. I also looked for reviews of multiplan.com and read a few complaints -- one from someone whose agents didn't give him up to date information about coverage and one that said to get insurance through multiplan.com that you first have to pay $100+ to join the organization and then you have to make your first insurance payment immediately. Another person said she had an information booklet her agent gave her and she could never figure out from looking at it what is covered and what isn't.

However, I also looked at a Web site about scams that said multiplan.com did not appear to be a scam. This was in one brief paragraph, and then the writer went on in detail about something that is a scam.

The Better Business Bureau site said that multiplan.com has no complaints against it and no unresolved issues. Although I read those three reviews about problems, three is a very small number. When a company really is a scam, usually it's easy to find scads of complaints about it online.

Multiplan.com seems iffy to me because the agent can't send me information that I can look over to see what's covered and exactly what the costs are. But the BBB says no complaints or cases have been filed again multiplan.

Can anyone advise me as to what I should do? If I don't make a change now, when November rolls around, unless I've found a job with insurance, I'm going to have to get some sort of medical plan.

Infinities of love and thanks in advance for any help you can give me,

Janie Junebug

P.S. I just spoke with an agent from Assurant. He said they are one of the five major insurance companies writing individual policies. He told me about a plan that would cost 350/month. It covers major medical and all recommended services such as mammograms and colonoscopies are free. Has anyone heard of Assurant? Do you know anything good or bad about them?

I'll also research Assurant and look for customer reviews.

As it turned out, the only insurance I could get was a cheapy Florida Blue plan that didn't cover much. No one would give me REAL insurance because of my pre-existing conditions. Of course, that problem will be over soon. Thank you, President Obama!