I have once again begun the quest to find affordable health insurance. This time, I am seeking a health plan that will cover only me. My husband has Medicare Part A, and will have Part B soon. We have no children. I am taking a close look a policy that appears to be one I can afford.
Earlier this week, I used HealthCare.gov to try and find an affordable health insurance plan. You can use that website to narrow down a whole bunch of health insurance plans, in order to find one that you can, (hopefully), afford. To be honest, I didn’t expect the search engine to actually locate one for me.
To my surprise, it came up with a plan called CelticSaver HSA PPO 80/20 2600 Deductible (PPO). What does all that gibberish mean? CelticSaver is the name of one of the health insurance plans from a company called Celtic Insurance. PPO is an abbreviation for Preferred Provider Organization. This is a type of managed care plan that is organized by an insurance company.
I’m not sure, but I think that the 80/20 refers to the medical loss ratio. All health insurers are required by law to spend at least 80% of the money that they get from premiums on medical care, and other things that can be reasonably be assumed will improve the health of their customers. The other 20% can be spent on salaries, office supplies, advertisements, and other administrative costs.
The part that says 2600 Deductible indicates that an individual who uses this plan will be required to pay down $2,600 per year before the insurer will cover any of that person’s medical bills. It seems that if a family used this plan, their deductible would be $5,150 per year.
The HSA part is interesting. It stands for Health Savings Account. You can’t get a health savings account unless you purchase a high deductible health insurance plan. The information I am reading says people who buy this plan are eligible to open up an HSA.
This is interesting for many reasons. An HSA account is designed to be an account that a person puts money into, for the purpose of using that money later on, to pay for her medical bills. This type of savings account generates interest, and is tax free. In other words, if you open an HSA, and your health plan doesn’t cover dental care, then you can use the funds in your HSA account to pay for the bill that comes from your dentist. This is just one example.
I took the time to make sure that my doctor is connected to this particular health plan. It seems that she is, but I need to call her and verify that. I also learned that my bank does offer HSA accounts. So far, so good. The information on HealthCare.gov says that this plan costs an estimated monthly base rate of $199.38 per month, which would be great, if it turns out to be true. It also says that I may be charged more than what is listed here.
I live in California, so a pop-up informed me that this plan does not cover maternity. My husband and I are not interested in having children, so that might be ok. I am expecting the plan to cover birth control. I am waiting for a representative of the insurance company to call me, so I can ask a bunch of questions about this health plan.
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