You and your wife are both young and in excellent health. Personally, I would either go without insurance at that stage in my life and expect to come out way ahead, get catastrophic insurance only, or do the HMO thing.
Trying to compare policies is virtually hopeless. You will never wade through the policies and figure out all the surprises.
The cheapest we have found is Blue Cross offered through the Cal State Alumni Association. You join the alumni association and you are eleigible for their group plan. You have to find some big group you can hook onto.
Actually I respectfully disagree with Art. Wading through the policies is pretty easy.
Sit down and think about what you are worried most about. Is it protecting income, protecting assets, prescription costs, etc. etc.
Make a simple grid, key points are:
Monthly premium
Max out of pocket in network and out of network
% paid for the services you expect to use the most i.e. what is your out of pocket after deductibles or costs
Fees for services you will use
There will be other things but once you look at the offerings they will become clear.
At your age and stage an HSA plan similiar to what MJuric wrote about in a previous thread would work. Having said that I am not aware of too many of those plans that you are going to get for much less than $300 per month which is very similiar to what it would cost you to put your wife on your plan. And you will be out of pocket for up to $5K if you have a catastrophic situation.
Yeah. Well, I’m not sure that wading through the policies is “pretty easy,” but it’s doable. It doesn’t take all that bad of a bike crash to make insurance pay, return on investment-wise.
"Wading through the policies is pretty easy. "
Solid point. It is easy if you have your favorite CFO do it for you.
It doesn’t take all that bad of a bike crash to make insurance pay, return on investment-wise.
Or, considering they are newly-weds, a pregnancy.
Bernie
I was thinking that, but I didn’t want to scare astro too badly. 