HBG Solo Health Collective (partnered with the Freelancer’s Union)?

Hey, I wondered if anyone has experience with HBG Solo Health Collective? They claim to offer major medical insurance for freelancers and sole proprietors, with no coverage maximum, after a $2500-10000 deductible. Monthly premiums are like $300-$400, which is waaaay less than I pay in NYC.

https://hbgsolo.com/faq

It seems they're exploiting various loopholes to offer major medical using a screening process that excludes people with preexisting conditions, which keeps the costs down. Basically, it's the way health insurance used to work, pre-ACA. They can apparently do this because to join you need to own a single-member business with an EIN, and from that they've built some kind of complicated legal structure to sell you a solo plan based on your business.

I assume their business model ultimately does rely on the existence of the ACA plans – I'm sure if you had a major health thing and started costing them serious money, they wait until the end of the year and then shunt you off to a state ACA plan for the next year.

All that being said, I'm sort of desperate. I'm a 36 year old freelancer living in NYC, and I pay $900/month for basically the worst insurance you can imagine. No one takes it, and it pays for nothing (except protection from medical bankruptcy, I hope). It's going up to $1050/month next year, and if I want insurance that some doctors actually take, I'd need to pay more like $1500/month, and even that insurance would be bad. There's no "good" option for freelancers making a typical NYC salary.

So, while I'm nervous about a non-ACA plan, I also basically need to move if I can't find some way to pay less for (real) health insurance. Thoughts?

submitted by /u/SlickCinematic
[comments]