Can you afford health insurance?

I am searching for affordable health insurance myself. I am now insured, I am presently employed, the end of the year I will not have a job the company is closing and I will be without health insurance. I cannot afford the health insurance they are offering through cobra. I don't know what I am going to do.

Well there are a lot of reasons why your rates might be higher for an individual than with an employer. The main reason is with an employer plan there are more people contributing money monthly, so they are able to make your monthly payments less expensive. So, how can an individual have this same kind of coverage? There are some companies that let you be in a benefits association, and that helps reduce your cost. However, if you have serious medical conditions, or you are pregnant, or you smoke, than even if you get into an association, your individual rates will be expensive. If you are relatively healthy you can get a good deal sometimes. I sell health insurance and it frustrates me when people say they are healthy and don't need it, because that is the time to get on a health insurance plan if you are not covered by your employer! The reason is, once you become sick you have not only the burden of being an individual, but also all of the expensive health problems. If you don't get it while you are healthy, good luck getting a decent rate! But, this really depends on where you live! Some states aren't like this, but where I'm at (Michigan) it's the case. The best you can get at that point is something like Bluecross, which is offered to anybody regardless of their health conditions for an affordable rate. The only catch with that, is it's not as good coverage as a private company. So, your best bet if you want insurance is to just get it while you are healthy! I know it's tough, that is why I got involved selling insurance because I was self employed and sick of not being able to find an affordable health insurance. Than I found my company, and liked it so much I wanted to tell other business owners. I got licensed, and now I'm telling them about it! If you are in Michigan I'd be happy to go over it with you what we offer, but if you are somewhere else I'd say ask around to small business owner's what they have! They can probably point you in the right direction since most of them don't have enough employees to get group insurance either and have to get individual plans! Hope this helped and good luck!

No We cannot afford it. We don't have health insurance our income is borderline to get foodstamps or medical but to low to afford health insurance so we don't have any and cannot afford to get any. We do without. We pray we don't have any major illness, or accident or surgery.

If you are healthy without major problems in your medical history, you should have no problem to get affordable health insurance. Females pay more just because of the regular check-ups and pap-smears we get. Anyhow, for an individual you can get health insurance between $150 to $200 per month with good coverage. If you take higher deductibles and max out of pocket and co-insurance, you will lower the price tag. Of course you have to do some research to get there. Now if you have a medical condition you might have problems. If you have to take daily medication, you might not get Rx-coverage. But it doesn't hurt to shop around. If you look hard enough, you'll find something. We went with private insurance for a year and paid about $450/month for a family of four, the insurance had maternity coverage, which makes it costly. With the fifth person it went up by $100, which made the coverage through my husband's employer the cheaper option and we still paid around $480/month, although now pre-tax. Our insurance next year will be $100 less per month (still through my husband's employer) but has significant increases in all areas that we have to pay out of pocket. We have to keep our fingers crossed that nothing terribly bad happens. With three very active kids, you are almost guaranteed a doctor visit a year for at least two of them in addition to the regular check-up for all three, possibly even an ER visit.