You quit, now what about healthcare?
I feel like healthcare is one of the biggest impediments to starting a company. Especially for people with special conditions, families or who are over 35. Do you agree? What are you doing to overcome the challenge?
I'm in NYC and the healthcare options for entrepreneurs are not great. There are the healthcare marketplaces, which are expensive HMOs with limited options for specialists. Also there are catastrophic and temporary plans, but those don't help with ongoing preventative care.
I wish there were one person PPO plans in NYC.
What are you all doing?
#ask-ih
Yeah, it's why people keep the job that they hate. In the eventuality that they'll need to be admitted to a hospital. It's quite a sad situation if you think about it. Healthcare should be free and I'm not ever changing my mind. I mean look how technology is advancing in medicine and how everything else is moving forward, but these horrible prices are standing here unmoved. I always like to read about new innovations in IT that have to do with medicine from here https://datica.com and I always see what new developments are being made.
Currently on an HSA (for myself, wife and kiddo). Year prior were on a PPO and effectively being pushed into the poor house considering the infrequency we go to the doctor (not to get political, but my healthcare rates have tripled since things have become "affordable").
We pay a higher premium for some things, but in the grand scheme of it all, we're paying a ton less overall. Preventative care things (annual check ups and such) are mostly covered.
I know quite a few people happy to just take the penalty (which I believe was dropped this year, so it's not even a concern) so you could effectively go self-pay all the way (which most places are more than happy to offer you deep self pay discounts).
Like a lot of computer nerds, I have weird recurring back pain, and I go to PT once a week. It's a fight to get insurance to cover it, but they do. If I were paying without insurance it would be like 2x the cost of my copay...
Now that I think of it I haven't really tallied up my current healthcare costs, and compared them to self-pay. Maybe self pay plus catastrophic would save me money...
Yeah, it's one of those things, you don't know unless you track it... we laid out the entire year + what we paid out of pocket last year, and we actually paid AS MUCH out of pocket as we did in premiums... and that was with a plan that was supposed to cover a bunch of shit.
Moving to paying less per month and a bit more out of pocket, we're actually saving money.
Not to delve too much into the back pain, but any life style / office style things available to help with that? I suffered quite a bit (like most nerds ;) back in the day, but ended up dropping some LBs (~145lbs down from ~180lbs) and moving to a sit/stand desk and working out lightly (10-15 minutes) every day. Back and shoulder (right shoulder had been an issue since I was a kid) all cleared up nicely over time.
Definitely investing in a better workstation soon. The PT has been huge for me but took a long time to find ones that actually help rather than just give you a few exercises and a quick massage. But good PT is hella expenaive (like 250/hr) Hence the desire for a PPO where I can keep going to my current PT.
I hear ya about PT... my daughter busted her ankle up pretty bad, and we did PT (covered by insurance) and actually decided to continue doing it monthly after insurance coverage on it ran out. Not costing us nearly as much (partly due to self pay, partly due to where we live).