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Free Market healthcare options in CA? Outside of ObamaCare? Are there any?


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2013 Oct 11, 5:11am   1,671 views  4 comments

by BoomAndBustCycle   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

Ever since I lived in CA i have had health insurance covered by my employer. I recently got married and my employer charged me $425 a month for my spouse thru blue shield... Just had a kid and now they want $985 a month to insure her and my wife. I looked on Covered CA and found a solid blue shield gold PPO that covers them for $490 a month. Since i dont qualify for any subsidies i wanted to search for healthcare on the open market... I have great credit so thought maybe that would help like it does with car insurance to some degree. I havent found a open market options... They all direct me to ACA... Or are crappy plans worse than ACA.

I am happy to pay the $490 a month thru ACA/Covered CA exchange, but are there any options on the open market? Anyone know any websites?

#politics

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1   drew_eckhardt   2013 Oct 11, 5:21am  

Note that you pay for insurance obtained through your employer with pre-tax dollars.

For example $985 / month - 28% federal income tax - 9.3% state - 1.45% medicare = $603 in take-home pay.

If you earn below the Social Security and SDI caps subtract 6.2% and 1.0% so it could cost you $532/month in take-home pay.

You may also look at what you'd save with a high-deductible plan that lets you use a HSA.

2   BoomAndBustCycle   2013 Oct 11, 1:32pm  

My employer deducts my dependent premiums after tax dollars are taken out. Apparently it's legal for employers to do this... cheap, but legal. I asked why they don't take out my premiums with pre-tax dollars, and they said that's the way they have it set up. It never really mattered before, because they pay my premium in full... but now with a wife and kid... it changes things.

So it's $985 a month... AFTER TAX.. which is a big bite of my paycheck that I'm thankfully only paying for 4 months before Affordable Care kicks in.

3   BoomAndBustCycle   2013 Oct 12, 10:10am  

Did some research... Apparently its a section 125 cafeteria plan that needs setup in order for employer to take health premiums out pre-tax.

Was gonna ask my finance dept why they havent setup a section 125 plan... To save its employees money. But dont' want to sound like im telling the finance dept how to so their jobs. Just annoying cause i could have saved thousands in premium costs the past year had my work set this up.

4   thomaswong.1986   2013 Oct 12, 10:18am  

BoomAndBustCycle says

Was gonna ask my finance dept why they havent setup a section 125 plan... To save its employees money. But dont' want to sound like im telling the finance dept how to so their jobs. Just annoying cause i could have saved thousands in premium costs the past year had my work set this up.

Sorry but not Finance/Accounting dept jobs to set up health plans.. your HR dept is responsible for that.. sounds like your a young start up company that should review their benefits. Perhaps if your HR dept doesnt have the experience they need to get some professional consulting to review and change the health plans.

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