Here's a fun game

[rolanni]

Go here: http://www.anthem.com/health-insurance/plans-and-benefits/health-insurance-plan/ME

Click the blue button on the upper right corner that says Compare Quote Apply Online

Cancel the pop-up demanding a password; you don't need a password for this.

Fill in the form: zipcode is 04901 county is Kennebec Your applicant is male or female born on some date that you find felicitous in 1952. Your spouse is male or female, natal day sometime in 1950. No children. Hit the orange button at the bottom of the form that says Get A Quote.

Note that the rates you will receive on the next page will change (i.e. Go UP) on June 30.

Take a look at the offerings. Play with the drop-down boxes. Have a ball.

Note that Anthem is THE health insurance provider for individual policies in the state of Maine, unless you count the semi-scam MEGAhealth. Dirigo Health Care (created by the former governor of Maine to provide...more affordable... health insurance to individual and small (as in one or two or ten person) businesses), is in the process of being dismantled by Mayor LePage, so is no longer an option -- not that it ever was much of an option, as byzantine as its payment system was.

Now! Who wants to take the side that the insurance industry isn't freaking outta control?

Comments

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

Dear Lord. I'm so sorry.

I moved to Maryland to move in with my then-girlfriend-now-wife, since I had a highly portable job and she didn't, and when I quit said highly-portable job to go back to self-employment, we were lucky enough to have someone point out Maryland's state insurance plan MHIP. Nobody knows about it, which is a tragedy, because you can get into it really easily, the rates are comparable to employer-provided health insurance (and in fact one of the criteria for getting into the state plan is if you've been quoted a premium for individual insurance that's more than a certain amount higher than MHIP's plan, or higher than "standard" for the plan you're being quoted for due to a pre-existing condition), and you can "buy down" pre-existing condition coverage by paying a slight increase in premiums for a year. Considering that my drugs alone are around a thousand dollars a month and my wife's employer won't cover me because despite us being married (out of state), they don't recognize out-of-state queer marriage, it has been a godsend.

I'm sure you've already thought of this, but: there are many, many umbrella organizations for small business owners and self-employed people out there that offer group health to their members. I don't know if any of them provide coverage in Maine, and you've probably already exhausted the research, but in case you haven't, I offer it as an option!

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

There are *not* many umbrella organizations with coverage in Maine.

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was afraid that might be the case from some of the things that were said in comments :(

The other thing I can think of is -- since there are two of you and you do qualify as a small business -- checking in with a small-business benefits provider (the one my last employer used to work with was ADP) and seeing what their rates are like. You don't need to tell them that you're a home-based business or that you're married; just tell them that you don't need anybody to do payroll, you're just looking for a group health plan administrator. Their rates are often much much better, since they generally provide group health for a lot of small companies, and therefore the cost is risk-managed across a much wider pool. I've never done that from an employer's end, though, so I don't know what it would cost.