Part Three: I'm an Entrepreneur?

I managed to find health insurance. Yay!

I also found that the system is nightmare to navigate. And that you definitely don't want to just spring for the first offer that's thrown your way, because the range of responses can be crazily wide. I applied for roughly the same plan at each of the four main providers in our state: high deductible + eligibility for a health savings account. And this is what their pricing algorithms spit out:

Company 1: Sorry, we don't take people with your pre-existing condition.

Company 2: Sorry, we don't take people with your pre-existing condition. But because we're the ensurer of last resort, and have to offer you a plan, here's the plan we stick people like you into: $1,500 deductable, $3000 out of pocket max, and no health savings account. The base price on it would be $60 -$75 a month, if we were offering it to a normal person. But you can have it for the low low price of $435 a month!

Company 3: Sure, we'll offer you our policy, charging you $15 more per month than we would a person without your condition.

Company 4: Sure, we'll offer you our policy, charging you $15 more per month than we'd charge a person without your condition. We're also $50 cheaper per month than company 3. (Of course, we don't have any in-network doctors that specialize in your condition within 100 miles of you, but other than that, you're set).

The Federal Government: If you can hold out for a couple more months, I can give you a lower deductible and possibly larger network of coverage than company 3, for the same price.

My one question is: why couldn't I have just paid someone to research all this for me?

I currently work at a small firm that, among other services, will research and compare life insurance plans, investment funds, and long-term-care insurance plans for our clients. I'm pretty sure there's people out there who run comparisons on auto insurance as well. Schools often have advisers that are there to help you start finding the right fit of a college. But I didn't run into anyone who did anything like this when it came to health insurance. Which doesn't make much sense to me; health insurance can be just as difficult and time-consuming an area to navigate as life insurance, and couple weeks ago, I would have happily paid someone a small fee to do all the footwork for me.

So! If anyone's interested in purchasing individual health insurance in Virginia...give me $50 and I'll troubleshoot the system for you? ;) And if you don't have money, I'll do it anyway, 'cuz health insurance is a good thing to have. (And I figure I need a lot more practice before I try to make an actual business out of my newfound expertise ;) ).

Part 2: Insurers of Last Resort

My second conclusive opinion regarding the whole healthcare deal:

Being charged seven times the base quote for a health insurance policy sucks.

Well, maybe that's more a rant than a conclusive opinion.

But seriously, guys! I'm perfectly happy to pay for all those medications and doctor visits out of pocket! My chronic preexisting condition is pretty darn mild, and inexpensive enough that I'll come nowhere near hitting a moderate deductible anyway. So...could you maybe charge me a bit less than 435 dollars a month? Please? All I'm asking for is basic catastrophic coverage, here: if I get hit by a car, or come down with some super-serious medical condition out of the blue, I don't want to end up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

At this rate, I'm just going to allow economic self-interest to take over, and take advantage of my tax dollars at work. Virtus is getting tired.

If there are other private risk pool options out there, they are crazily obscure things that are NOT well advertised. I have found no churches that offer any. Google has given no results, and neither have any of the healthcare resource pages (and I have looked at a heck of a lot). I have been contacted by at least three different scams, though. And I suppose I can still brave a phone tree or two.

Maybe Hillsdale College can set up an insurance pool for its graduates? :) It would solve all my problems, AND it would be an awesome Hillsdalian answer to Obamacare! Win-win!

Yes, I'm being a bit facetious here. But honestly: in many states, my only options for health insurance would seem to be

a) the federal government
b) the state government
c) a private company required by law to take anyone who applies.

Or I could quit my job, and hit the streets and try to find a job at a company that might eventually offer me health insurance. Or I could marry someone with health insurance. Or I could found my own business, and become eligible to join a risk pool of the self-employed. (I'd have to check up on whether they'd be able to decline me, or charge me higher rates. As I really don't care to quit my job, though, I can't say I've looked into this option very thoroughly).

Personally, the marriage option seems the easiest. I'd just need to find someone with insurance willing to sign a contract and enter a strictly business paperwork relationship. Elderly couples sometimes "officially" divorce to avoid losing their home, so why not try the inverse when it comes to health insurance? :)

Health Insurance!

So...after being declined individual coverage by a private health insurance company (one that used to offer me coverage under an employer-sponsored program), I started trying to track down what exact health insurance options exist in my state. More than once, I was very tempted just to pick up the phone and dial my way through the state government phone tree, to someone who could answer this question for me. But...alas, I am a Hillsdale college graduate, and damned if I was going to resort to calling the government for help, even on the matter of whether I was eligible for government help. Virtus tentamine gaudet, et. al.

There are many sites out there about health insurance, with much interesting and thorough information. But the problem is, most of it is just stuff you plain don't need. When you're standing out in the cold, going "Ok, so what on earth are my options now???", there's a very specific and essential list of things you need to know, and you DON'T want to have to sort through fifty thousand web pages to get it.

Thus, the following annotated bibliography is designed to aid anyone who might conceivably face a similar situation.

First, there's healthinsuranceinfo.net. Go here, select your state, and it will answer your questions in a direct and comprehensible way. It is the most user-friendly, layman-friendly site I've been able to find. It's arranged in a very intuitively accessible way. Any jargon is explained in plain English, without making you feel like you're a 3-year-old. Yes, some pages may not be updated with the latest information. Which is an important caveat. But the plusses of the site make it worth the while anyway, so much so that I'm listing it first on this list despite that drawback. (Even for Virginia, which was last updated in 2007, it presents the best explanation of every option except the recently created federal stopgap high risk pool).

To make sure you haven't missed any recent updates, you should cross-reference with the the individual state pages on healthinsurance.org. They are the place that I found the link to the healthinsuranceinfo.org site, and they are the most straightforward of the other sites I looked at. (Well, at least the info pages. I can't vouch for the lobbyist pages).

For information about the federal high-risk pool, this page at healthcare.gov is the best place to look.

healthcare.gov also has the a handy questionnaire you can take, which will spit out some options available to you. It's quick and incomplete, though -- for Virginia, it doesn't even mention that there's an "insurer of last resort," which is a BIG DEAL. I also ran into broken links when I tried to access a page about resources available to me.

Finally, if you want some pretty charts, this page by the Kaiser Foundation isn't bad. It was the thing that first clued me in to the fact that Virginia had this "insurer of last resort" option, though it took quite a bit more searching to figure out exactly what that meant.

And as a postscript, since any post about healthcare has to have some half-baked opinion nowadays, I suppose I should add my first conclusively solid opinion about the whole mess (that I hope even the most libertarian small government people might be able to agree with): If someone is trying to be responsible and buy health insurance, by golly there should be a way for them to at least buy basic catastrophic coverage health insurance. :(