Insurance ideas?

I can totally empathize. The company I work at has expensive insurance. When I was there before, it was costing almost $100 a week for me and DW.

Now, we're on DW's insurance, which is through umbrella of Aetna. She works for a department store that is nationwide so they qualify for huge group rates. So we have medical and dental on us both for $40 a week. I just pay her what they take out of her check. Actually, I've been paying her a little more to help her afford her new car that she got a month ago. Anyway, A $250 deductible is not bad at all. You might balance that with a care credit account. It's a card that you can pay into and build up a balance ahead of time, or have a payment plan and it's usually used for dental work. I've already used up my dental insurance this year and now I've got a load on care credit. So, I know how tight budgets are.

I don't know what your finances are but, if you can afford insurance, then you should. And you're still young enough to qualify for some good plans and premiums.

We're insured so many ways. Our car warranties have death insurance. If we pass away, the warranty insurance pays the car off. We have full life insurance for $100,000. I'm worth more dead than alive. The house is overinsured about $40k more than what it cost me because that is what it would cost to build the same house today. County appraisal is about $10k more than what I paid and market value is $20k over what I paid. Point being, don't sell your future short. There will be rainy days and it is better to be prepared, if you can be.

 Don't have any advice, but it may make you feel better to know I have a $2500 deductible, no brand name RX coverage and am paying $450/month for one person after coming off COBRA.  The health insurance situation in this country kills me.  If you want more specific info on what exactly is covered, insist on being provided with the policy contract or policy document, that typically shows you EXACTLY what is and is not covered and those sneaky little tricks they'll use to stick it to you.  Good luck!

That's a good deal, but talk with someone at the company to find out what exactly is covered, ask about wellness visits etc.  I was paying $500 a month with a $5000 deductible for a family of 3 (even after giving birth, etc. we never met our deductible)...it was awful!!!  I can tell you that with discounted insurance rates, a non-complicated birth in a private hospital ran about $3600.

Now I work for a major corporation and pay about $150 a month with 0 deductible....much better.

I've got Kaiser through my late DHs employment with the state and whatever it costs just continues to come out of the pension check so I don't pay anything out of pocket for it ... $10 co-pay and $5 prescriptions.  I pay separately for Kaiser for my DGS (he's 15) and that costs me $208 a month for medical and Delta dental and he has a $20 co-pay. I understand the Wal-Marts that have a pharmacy charge about $4/$6 for all their prescriptions.

Joyce

The $4/$10 scripts at Walmart are for certain meds.  But they have printouts available for you to take to your doctor and I've had good luck asking the docs to look over the list and see if there's something there that will work just as well as what they want to prescribe.  I'm pretty sure it's $4 for a 30 day supply, $10 for a 90 day supply.  I and my son tend to need tons of RXs, and I've found that the mail order RX programs alot of insurance companies have work really well to save money on scripts you need on a continuous basis.