20080327 Finding Health Insurance if You Are Self Employed by Marci Alboher

Finding Health Insurance if You Are Self-Employed by Marci Alboher

March 31, 2008

I have been self-employed for essentially all my working career and this article really struck home, especially: “If there is one thing that separates the self-employed from those employed by others, it is their preoccupation with health insurance.”

And – “I don’t know if people who don’t have chronic illnesses can really understand this,” she said. “But I have worked full time my entire adult life — generally 15 to 18 hours a day. I have paid into the system for all those years. And there is only one thing that could bankrupt me, and it is my health. I could lose every penny I own from one serious hospitalization without insurance….”

Considering the dynamic that small business and the self-employed still constitute the meat and potatoes of our economy I sure wish someone could figure this out…

Nevertheless, one thing is for sure, the populist-driven health care initiatives that are proposed by presidential candidates Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – are not the answer.

Not only will their plans bankrupt the nation - I have no interest in dealing with some faceless, uncaring government bureaucrat for my healthcare.

That said –

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Shifting Careers: Finding Health Insurance if You Are Self-Employed

By MARCI ALBOHER

Published: March 27, 2008

If there is one thing that separates the self-employed from those employed by others, it is their preoccupation with health insurance.

I was reminded of this on Feb. 14, when I wrote a post on the Shifting Careers blog asking small-business owners and would-be entrepreneurs what they were doing about health insurance. Within hours, scores of people posted comments about their own experiences and, if they had managed to find good resources, shared those. I have been reading e-mail messages and trying to make sense of the subject ever since. In short, it is not pretty out there.

A 43-year-old woman wrote about going without insurance in the first year of her business. “I lived in terror of needing a doctor visit or worse yet, lab tests or something more,” she said…

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The unluckiest are those with chronic illnesses or the dreaded pre-existing condition that results in a denial of coverage. Many of these people abandon dreams of entrepreneurship altogether because they need jobs that come with a health plan and they cannot find a way to self-insure.

[…]

“I don’t know if people who don’t have chronic illnesses can really understand this,” she said. “But I have worked full time my entire adult life — generally 15 to 18 hours a day. I have paid into the system for all those years. And there is only one thing that could bankrupt me, and it is my health. I could lose every penny I own from one serious hospitalization without insurance.

Read the entire article. The article is written well, but its content will make ya sick…Finding Health Insurance if You Are Self-Employed

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