Health Care Advisors?

[Aerides]

My COBRA is the equivalent in coverage of the best of the Gold ACA plans, or close enough. For us in FL, it is about the cost of an unsub-d Silver ACA plan. FL has a lot of providers, Blue being dominant.

There are so many variables with ACA that are different from COBRA/Employer plans: ACA deductible is usually bigger, docs are more limited, etc. When switching mid-year, you lose any accrued deductible (your new plan still requires you to meet the full deductible to kick in, no matter if you've already spent $2k on care ytd).

I took Cobra because of income from 2017 being too high from severance, funded it with some of the HSA money I'd stock piled. We'll go to ACA for 2019, since cobra ends in Feb, and now we have a good idea for post-ER income. We could have estimated of course, but eh. I'll probably drop down to a Bronze/subbed plan for our first year on it (we are low-consuming at this point) and adjust annually from there.

[cathy63]

Quote:

Originally Posted by urn2bfree Not blaming anyone for gaming the system this way. The lawmakers set it up this way to give people time to sort things out, but this is why COBRA is so expensive.

The reason COBRA is expensive is because the employer chose an expensive plan, not because a small fraction of people signed up after having a health issue. By law, the maximum price of a COBRA policy is 100% of the actual premium plus up to 2% administrative fees. If the price is higher than an ACA plan, well that's what it actually costs to have the fancy health insurance plan your employer chose for you.

[Rianne]

We had a Health Care Advisor for 2018. She walked us through several plans and went into the minutia of co-pay, out of pocket, out of network, co insurance and HSA. We asked about several situations that could occur, more catastrophic. She knew the HI industry and how coding works. She was so valuable to us and we'll call her for 2019. The HC plan we ended up choosing paid her fee.