What to do about health insurance

[Jonathan Pletzke]

Before I start posting elsewhere on the forum, I thought it wise to give a little introduction.

My name is Jonathan Pletzke. I am not in early retirement, but I left my "job-job" anyway to find something that better fits me. "I'm not retired, but it sure feels like it" is what I heard from a cookbook writer, and that's my goal.

One year ago, the COBRA continuation health insurance from my previous employer was due to run out, so I went to go shopping for health insurance. I had intended to put a chapter in a book about ways to "retire early" when you don't really have the financial resources to do so (i.e. when you can't live on 4% of your invested assets). A chapter was not enough, and I found it hard to get the hard facts on buying health insurance, so I put that project on hold. The result of the last year of research has been incorporated into a new book (not my first, that was in 1996 - any computer folks remember Smalltalk?). My new book is a guide for buyers of health insurance, including early-retirees and early-retiree wanna-bees, among others. My book is titled Get a Good Deal on Your Health Insurance Without Getting Ripped-Off.

I hope to be able to share what I have learned over the last year with folks in this community. I hope that you'll welcome me into your community, so that I can post and not just lurk on this forum.

-Jonathan

 

[bssc]

Hi and welcome.

I have removed your sig line per our terms of service, which states

"No SPAM! Participants may not post to direct others to any pages at their own commercial website or website in which they have a commercial interest, including informational pages."

Please check out the entire set of rules here. We look forward to you sharing your knowledge with these rules in mind.

 

[mn54]

Welcome to the forum Jonathan. For those of us "non-military" types who have to buy our own health insurance your knowledge on this subject will be very helpful. Looking forward to your future posts.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

Before I start posting elsewhere on the forum, I thought it wise to give a little introduction.

Add my welcome to the others.

I suggest you do a search for "health insurance" for starters (most are in the Health and Early Retirement" forum). You might be surprised and pleased at the number and quality of many of those threads. Many are political, others are informative and more than a few are pretty creative.

Feel free to jump in and by all means don't limit yourself to one topic, even if it's one of your favorite topics.