I formed my LLC in March, and due to my business doing well, will be leaving my “j.o.b.”
I need healthcare for my family (pregnant wife, one child, myself). Who do you use for healthcare insurance, and how did you make that decision? I’m not sure what policies are the best or not. To give you and idea, at the j.o.b., my monthily premium is about $280 with a $4k family deductible and 2million coverage. Thanks in advance…
How has your LLC elected to be taxed?
I haven’t received that information from my attorney yet. He was waiting on the tax ID.
Now that you bring that up…how does that affect choosing healthcare? What tax election would benefit in choosing healthcare?
C-corp offers the most flexibility for employee benefits.
It really s##ks that these guys go around selling entities and never give any guidance regarding pros and cons of the various options.
I just finished up a 2004/5/6 return for a guy who was told he had an S-corp. Reality is his election was busted and now he’s got C-corp losses tied up inside the S where he can’t use them. It probably could have been fixed in 03 or 04 if the guy had known what he was doing.
I’d move to France or Canada if healthcare is an issue.
Huh?
I think the question is where do individuals who don’t have a 9-5 get health insurance.
mw, you will have to buy it on the open market. Alliant Health does focus on the self-employed. Some places to get group insurance include your local RE association, National REIA or a local chapter, your local chamber of commerce, the alumni association of your university, trade groups (e. g. IEEE, NAR). The suggestions above come into play when your business is generating excess cash. At that point, you can create a plan funded by your company and gets lots of deductions.
mw:
I’ve been on my own a few years, and premiums had escalated. About six years ago, I was paying around $600/month for a family POS plan, and it now costs $1,150/month for an HMO plan.
You mentioned $230/month, and my guess is that its’ what your employer charges. I worked in a large company about 15 years ago, and the company was paying a health insurer $660/month to insure a family, and they had over 3,000 employees. At the time, employees paid nothing, though later, it was $50.00/month
The issues for me:
It might pay to go on COBRA for a while, as it’s cheaper than going on your own. My problem was “United Health Care” which I had at the time considered COBRA a nuisance, kept poor records, and I always had trouble at the doctor’s office when they try to get the payment approved. My payments were never applied correctly.
Unless the plan is a state approved insurance plan, there are many plans out there that are not. I read a story about auto shop owners in NJ paying premuins to an association plan, only to find the plan was unable to pay the claims, after a 100K surgery, in one case. Under NY State insurance law, if I was covered under an approved state plan, the hospital cannot come after me for the bills.
This is not to say the hospital won’t try to place individuals for collections if the insurer fails to pay, which happened to me. I called the local paper, Newsday, they did a story, and the bill was paid in a week. I since found out NY state law prohibits such actions if it is a bonafide insruance plan.
After my dad had a serious operation, I found a major gap, namely, rehab. Nowadays, after a major operation, they can throw you out of the hosptial, to a rehab center, where you might be only covered for 60 days. Rehab costs $300/day PLUS medication. My dad found out the hard way, thought that with Blue Cross, and Medicare, he’s totally covered. He’s only covered for 60 ays.
Right now, I can get a cheaper policy, 60 days only for rehab, at $800/month versus over $1,150 paying a full year of rehab.
Another thing to watch out for is “life time maximums”. Checking out the cheaper policies here, they’re genreally capped at 1MM or 2MM. So if you’re "hit by a truck, in a coma, you may hit the 1MM cap and find yourself dumped onto the streets.
And decide if you want POS plans, HMO plans. POS plans are more expensive and allows out of network treatment. HMO plans restricts you to their own network.
How often do you travel, and does your plan have procedures for “out of area” treatment.
Do you need a plan with eyeglass, persription drug etc, and at what co-pay, At $1,150/month, I get eyeglasses, eye exams, and $25.00 copay for drugs at a local pharmacys, copay cut in half if I order drugs by mail.
Whatever you do, if you have a prior medical condition, don;t have any lapse of coverage, or you may find you cannot get into a new plan. Under federal law, a plan must take you if you’re already in another plan.
BTW, I get my coverage thru a plan that formed an employer group to negotiate the plans with the insurance companies.
here’s what I did when I went solo:
dig out your receipts and see how many times everyone went to the doc last few years. same for meds.
go online and check out various policies. there will be 2 or 3 main “types”: high-deductible major medical only, primary care type plans, and deductible and 80/20 or 75/25 plans.
figure out how much a doc visit will be with and WITHOUT insurance. for me a doc visit with no ins is $140 if they just give you stupid looks. do the same with meds.
then using your averages for how many visits/prescriptions, figure out how much out of pocket you’ll have with each plan. total out of pocket plus premiums = total cost. shoot for lowest total cost.
if you’re healthy and don’t have any doc visits (except annual) no chronic meds, etc, usually a high deductible with HSA will be cheapest overall. if you have kids and/or lots of visits, then the primary care plan may be a better overall value.
good luck. none of it is cheap.