Private health insurance

[Patriots1952]

I will soon be 61...I am thinking about retiring early at 62...My biggest concern will be the cost of private health insurance..Anyone who has gone thru retiring at 62....cost of a good plan (individual)..thanks..

[MRG]

I retired at 56 (this year), my plan is to use COBRA to stay on Megacorps plan until first of year.

I'm counting on ACA to be there, unfortunately I live in a state thst is not building an exchange, and have to wait for the federal exchange. Looking at a couple of state exchanges, I'm hopefull my costs will come down from COBRA.

MRG

[bUU]

You're in a tough situation because no one has any relevant personal experience for you, because the nature of getting private insurance for those years between FIRE and Medicare eligibility is changing effectively January 1.

Having said that, you may find this calculator useful:

Subsidy Calculator | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

I entered an arbitrarily high income amount and found a 62 year old non-smoker can get a Silver plan for $8,671 in 2014. A Bronze plan would be a bit less. A Gold plan a bit more.

[pb4uski]

I retired about 18 months ago at age 56.

I had initially planed to use COBRA for our HDHI but I found small group health insurance rates were better so I formed an LLC for any consulting work that I might do and the LLC joined our local chamber of commerce and enrolled in their small group HI plan. It turned out to be ~20% lower than individual rates and ~35% less than COBRA.

Since you'll be retiring after 1/1/14 you can buy individual health insurance coverage on the Obamacare exchanges (assuming that they pull it off).