I was just thinking about what other options are out there for healthcare coverage. I signed up with Kaiser Permanente 2 years ago. I own my own company so I self-insure my family. Prior to that I lived abroad and bought private medical insurance that was amazing! Expensive but really great and rivals anything I’ve had in the USA.
As with others, they keep raising the prices each year. We have a plan which covers my wife and I and our two kids. Keep in mind my wife and I are still fairly young and our kids are just 3 and 4. We pay almost $1,600 a month now for coverage.
When we first got it I thought they were pretty good. I liked the technology aspect of Kaiser where you take a blood test and you get emails instantly as each result comes back. It keeps track of all your prescriptions and you can order online. All your physical information is all online. Heck, you can even email with your doctor with them responding fairly quickly.
What I found about Kaiser is they are GREAT for preventative type stuff. Free immunizations for the kids. Free annual physicals, etc. But if you have any more serious type issue or have to get referred to a specialist they kind of drag their feet.
Plus when our kids are sick (nothing serious but just fever, flu, etc) they almost never can see their own physician who is really great. We almost always either get stuck seeing a nurse or some other random doctor as their doctor never can get them in besides annual exams, etc.
I’m lucky as though it’s a small world, my primary care physician just happens to live down the street from me in the same development. So if I need anything he always gets back to me quickly.
We are young and healthy and mainly got it because we have young kids, and we plan on maybe having more kids and there weren’t a whole lot of options out there. $1,600 a month ($19,000 a year) is quite a bit to pay for mediocre medical coverage.
It just doesn’t seem like there are too many great options for individual coverage if you self-insure.
Does anyone else have any good options besides this Costco that they can recommend based on personal experience?
