Health Insurance in NY State

[Littleodie914]

So, the short n' skinny of it is I moved to the state of New York a couple weeks ago. Easy enough, right? I had a job and an apartment lined up, no hitches.

The company I work for is a start-up with less than 10 employees, and as such does not offer health insurance as a benefit to its employees. This is a bummer, but not a deal-breaker, and I've been working for the company for a past couple years. I recently graduated from university, hence the location change, and the opportunity to no longer be covered under my parents' health insurance plan.

The problem is that, unless I'm looking in the wrong places, a young person can't afford good health insurance on his own. Blue Cross/Blue Shield, one of the leader's in health insurance, quoted me at $1500 a month for health insurance. This is extremely outside my price range. The next place I called had $600 a month coverage. Close, but no cigar. That's almost more than my rent.

Finally, I settled with a company (that I'll not name) that offers limited indemnity insurance for about $200 a month, but the coverage is awful. It essentially covers a handful of doctor's visits a year, and that's about it. Accidents or catastrophe's are out of the question, I'm not going hang gliding for a looong time.

So my question is, why is it so hard to find affordable, dependable health insurance? Is it just a NY state thing? Finding auto insurance was affordable, easy, and the people were extremely helpful. Finding health insurance was confusing, ridiculously expensive, and it all seemed extremely scammy.

What do people in their early-20's do for health insurance if they can't receive it through their place of employment?

 

[Melrose]

Health insurance in New York is expensive. Have you looked into Healthy NY? There is a cut off on how much you can make and still have it, though.. I forget what the cutoff is.

It's an industry that preys on fear - people are afraid to not have it, and in the meantime they keeping raising their rates without upping the cutoff or the quality of the coverage. Oddly, the more it costs the more worried you get about not having it... It's like an infinite, endless merry-go-round that you pay through the nose to ride on and (they tell you) you can't get off.

Welcome to the wonderful state of bickering legislators, highest taxes in the nation, and dysfunctional government.

 

[Littleodie914]

Thanks for the response. It's unfortunate that a system designed to help people ends up screwing them over instead.

Are there any disadvantages (aside from the obvious lack of coverage) to not having health insurance? Does it make it more difficult/expensive to get health insurance in the future? Does auto insurance go up? If there aren't any long-term disadvantages (I can cover doctor's visits out-of-pocket, but not surgeries, etc.), it would probably be more beneficial for me to go without health insurance than pay $200 a month for essentially nothing. (Heck, I could save it for future insurance premiums.)

Edit: I did look into Healthy NY, but I'm just over the income cutoff. It seems like I've searched every avenue, and it's either cheap for nothing, or too much for everything. There's no middle ground I've found.

 

[Tomorrow]

I think it's less about being in NY and more about being with a small company that doesn't offer a group rate on insurance.

Keep shopping around - the rates you found seem more or less on the mark with what I saw when I had to buy my own insurance (I was contracting), and I live in Texas. The biggest thing those policies can do for you is negotiate a lower rate with the doctor; one example I had was that I was only charged $92 (which I had to pay) for a procedure that the doctor normally bills over $600 for.

Also, there are insurance co-ops which allow people to buy in at a group rate, so that your coverage would be closer (in both coverage and price) to what you would get from a larger employer. Good luck!