Looking for Health Inusrance for myself, my fiance and my daughter.
The cheapest quote we got was for $1668. That's insane.
We are also running into problems because we are not married....yet!

Any recs would be awesome!
Thanks!
~Alisha

$1668 a month? did you leave off a number for the yearly amount?

You should only get catastrophic health insurance for your family. For regular check ups, dental, etc. get a high interest savings account from ING or the like and work out a monthly deposit your family will put into it.

Health insurance companies are set up so that they win and you lose. You will almost never get more out of them than you pay to them -- that's the whole point. By seetting up a special savings account instead, you have these advantages:

+ If your family doesn't need to see the doctor for x months, that money will roll over for when you need it later (you'd never see that money with an insurance company).

+ If you or your spouse get in dire financial circumstances, the health insurance company would cut you off because you can't make the payments -- whereas with a savings account, you will always have that money there even in hard times and if you skip a few months because you need that money to eat, the sky won't fall.

+ The money you put into the account will actually be GROWING with INTEREST, so it's a good investment for your family that has benefits on its own. Paying that money to a third party company is not an investment -- it's an expense.

+ If someone in your family were to get a disease or long term condition of some kind, you would no longer be able to pay for the health insurance when you need it most because their rates would skyrocket -- with a savings account that you continually make payments to and which you will likely not withdrawing more than you deposit, your family member will be better off.


I speak both from reading up on health insurance companies and first hand. Health insurance has become less like insurance and more like "pre paid medical care," and that's great for insurance companies and for doctors -- but not for consumers. It lures people into a false sense of security, when it's really like going to Vegas hoping to beat the dealers at their own game. The only people who financially "win" against health insurance companies are those who defraud the companies and those to whom something catastrophic happens and whose lawyer manages to wrench every penny out of them (before the insurance company drops them completely as soon as possible). I have a disease and people are shocked that I don't have health insurance -- but they don't realize that the amount I'd have to pay for insurance with a pre-existing condition is INCREDIBLY high and that paying half of the lowest quote I found into a high interest savings account more than covers all my needs.

Yeah.. I have ZERO insurance and any company I'd look at just sees $$$$$$ because I have some nasty pre-existing conditions. Nasty enough, last month I got disability, which for the time being has ended my photography career. Good news is in 20 more months I'll qualify for Medicade.. wooohoo.. then I might actually be able to get my stuff fixed permanently. But until then.. I escrewed.

Good luck with the search..