Alternative to Traditional Health Insurance

I just commented this on another persona post but thought it may be helpful to others. My husband is self-employed and I have a job at a family company but I’m the only employee. We don’t have kids and are both in our early 40’s but things may be cheaper if you are younger, and most of these options will work with kids too.

1 – Look for Direct Primary Care near you. This is NOT concierge medicine. For us as a couple we pay $150 a month and it’s been amazing. They don’t do health insurance so everything is easier and all appointments and a lot of tests and such as free or at cost. You can also usually get appointments same or next day for sick visits and can text and message your doctor.

2 – Before PA decided for whatever reason they wouldn’t allow it, we used Sedera for a year and did have to use it for a hospital visit. It’s a Non-religious health share plan. Yes, there are risks that not everything will be covered but it was SO much better and cheaper than regular health insurance for us AND with regular insurance half the time things aren’t covered anyway even when you think they should be.

3 – If not that, look into an indemnity plan. They can kinda be a pain in the ass, but this year we had a major emergency and it was absolutely worth it. Essentially you submit your bills and there is a set amount you are given for covered things.

4 – If you do any of these things, ALWAYS say you do not have insurance and are cash pay. #2 and #3 are not traditional insurance, and you get cash pay prices and submit the bills later and then can pay once you get the money.

5 – IF you have a major medical emergency, look into if the hospital has a financial aid program. Some do – especially designed for people who don’t make a ton of money but make too much to qualify for other programs to help with medical bills. Between #4 and #5 – what originally was about $37k total in hospital bills, ended up being $11k with Cash Pay and except for the doctors that he saw in the hospital that were not billed through the hospital we got over 10k of that forgiven completely.

With our state’s health insurance plan – for the two years we’ve gone non-traditional like above, we would’ve have to pay anywhere between 10-25k more in a two year period than doing what I state above given the medical emergencies we’ve had and what we would’ve paid.