How to purchase your own health coverage

How to purchase your own health coverage

"Buying private medical insurance international is no picnic, but group benefits aren't an option for everyone. Here's what you need to know to purchase for an individual health policy.

As companies cut expenses and more entrepreneurs strike out on their own, the individual health insurance market is growing.

"There's been a precipitous drop in the number of businesses offering coverage," says Sam Gibbs, the senior vice president of eHealthInsurance, an online insurance broker.

These days, the same people who traded company pension plans for self-managed 401(k)s are being asked to take on one more chore that used to be handled by human resources: shopping, selecting and purchasing health coverage. And it can be daunting.

Rob Snow put it off for more than a year. When he left a successful online company at age 39 to start Snow Portfolio Management in Bethesda, Md., he took advantage of COBRA, or the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which allowed him to remain on his old company's group plan as long as he paid the premiums. But that privilege extends only for 18 months. And he was nearing the end of it. (For more, see "Know your COBRA rights.")

So, one weekend, Snow sat down at his computer and searched for "health insurance" -- and got a million hits. "I probably spent an entire day scrolling through those," he says. "I got worn out. I probably didn't do anything for three weeks."

But Snow eventually went back to the computer and zeroed in on a few sites that allowed him to get quotes or compare policies.

His pick was a regular preferred provider organization, or PPO, plan with a high deductible that allowed the family to keep their doctors -- one of his wife's must-haves. "There's no way she was ever going to change pediatricians," he says. And the monthly premiums were $603, a savings of as much as $435 per month for their family of five.

"One of the reasons I probably saved as much as I did was that we're all, thankfully, pretty healthy," Snow says.

Not surprisingly, when you're buying health insurance, your health is a key factor.

"The healthy individual out there buying insurance does not have that much trouble," says Sandy Praeger, Kansas' insurance commissioner and the 2008 president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. But for people with health issues or pre-existing conditions, "it can be tough, if not impossible, to find coverage in the individual market."

• Uninsured by choice? Are they nuts?

And then there's shopping for policies. For people who've never had to do it themselves, "there is the perception that you make a call or two and you've got it," says Jerry Flanagan, the health care policy director for Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group. "You have to do a lot of research, know what you're getting and buy it before you cancel your (current) coverage.

"The individual market is a very difficult place for consumers to find affordable care with good coverage," Flanagan says.

Key insurance questions

If you're purchasing your own health coverage, there are three big issues:

• Can you get coverage?

• Can you afford the premiums?

• Does it cover what you need covered? (...) "
  
  

  in Bankrate

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Pets Are Getting Killed for the Insurance Money

Pets Are Getting Killed for the Insurance Money

"Insurance fraud has reached a new low in the U.K., where authorities have discovered a rise in claims on pet insurance policies.

According to the Association of British Insurers, last year £1,929,900 ($3 million) was collected in pet insurance compared to £420,000 ($667, 842) in 2009, the Telegraph reports. In 2010, 2.3 million cats and dogs were insured, and since almost any type of animal can be insured, experts are bracing for an even bigger influx in dishonest claims.

The new scheme includes pet owners selling or killing their own pets to claim insurance money, as well as staging “fake accidents” to conceal previous injuries or conditions not covered by the policy. Some insurers believe people go as far as to deliberately lose animals or make up their existence.

Experts are also questioning the involvement of veterinarians, who might prescribe unnecessary and expensive medicine or treat animals who are not actually sick in order to collect money.  Carys Clarke, a solicitor who works as an insurance fraud investigator, told Daily Mail that vets are not required to use the cheapest drugs available and can charge up to double the price for treatment. “These are particularly worrying types of fraud because it often requires the help of a vet,” she said."

in Time

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Sex Change Surgery Is Now Tax Deductible

Sex Change Surgery Is Now Tax Deductible

"The Internal Revenue Service isn’t going to fight people any longer who want to deduct the cost of gender reassignment surgery from their taxes.

According to a so-called acquiescence filed earlier this month, IRS officials notified the Tax Court that it would abide by a 2010 decision that held that some medical expenses from such surgeries could be deducted. It also ends the nearly decade-long battle that Rhiannon O’Donnabhain, who was born male and fathered three children, waged against the IRS to deduct $5,000 in expenses she incurred to bring her anatomy in line with her gender identity. The IRS at first denied her request claiming the procedure was entirely cosmetic.

O’Donnabhain’s victory highlights the struggle that people with Gender Identification Disorders face as they undergo the long, painful and potentially costly treatment to contour the bodies that they were born with into what they think they ought to be. Each year more than 1,000 people undergo the surgery, which costs tens of thousands of dollars and often isn’t covered by insurance, according to the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.

“There is something to be said when a federal court recognizes general identity disorder as a serious medical condition,” says Karen Loewy, an attorney with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the non-profit that represented O’Donnabhain, in an interview. The IRS is saying that it’s going to do what the Tax Court tells them to do, Loewy says.

The case was not a complete victory for O’Donnabhain. Her request to deduct expenses for her breast augmentation were not allowed because it was directed at improving her appearance and not to treat disease as construed by the tax code.

Anthony Infanti, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who followed the case, tells TIME Moneyland that the court didn’t explicitly rule that out for future cases. “It was more fact-specific to that situation,” he says.

The Tax Court’s panel of judges could hardly be accused of bending over backwards to accommodate O’Donnabhain. Even in his concurring opinion, Tax Court Judge Mark V. Holmes lamented that making gender identity disorder a tax-deductible medical expense drafts “our court into culture wars in which tax lawyers have heretofore claimed noncombatant status.”

And some of the court’s language disturbed Infanti.  “It clearly showed how political tax law can be,” he said.  “Some of the dissenting opinions were clearly hostile to the taxpayer.”

(...)"

in Time

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