Locums - Health and dental insurance?

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emergentmd

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Hi all and especially fellow locums doc. I am now full locums and can not tell you how freeing it is.

But where do you guys go to get Health and Dental especially if you live in Texas? I have health for my family for another year but when I looked at what is available online, the plans are terrible (and I have a super high deductible terrible plan now) and restrictive on who I can see.

Where do you guys go for your health plan?

Also, is keeping dental worth it and what are you paying? I am currently quoted for 120/mo to keep my Cobra plan which seems OK. I looked online and I have seen it as low as 70/mo for a family but haven't checked on what they cover. So that would cost me 1400/yr which covers all cleaning/xrays and pays a part of any other work. Even if we went self pay, each cleaning costs about 125 so that costs about $1250 a year for 10 cleanings.

So is it worth it or should I just go self pay?

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Don't go self pay, not a good idea in this country. Try ehealthinsirance.com. They've got brokers that can get you better rates. I agree the rates suck balls in Texas. Thank god I got on my wife's plan - if that is an option for you, you should totally do that. If you don't have a wife, then go and get one.


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I definitely won't go self pay for health but considering self pay for dental.

I will try that ehealth and see. I tried some place similar and its expensive with super high deductible.

I have a wife, someone I plan on keeping for awhile, but she sadly has an unpaid job called motherhood. It would be a no brainer if she had insurance.

Any thoughts on those christian ministry health coops? I still don't really understand it and what they cover.
 
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I have to get health insurance through Obamacare. It sucks for sure, and I have $4000 deductible. There is no longer individual private insurance in NV.

Don't waste your time with dental. Most plans costs about 50/month and have a $1000 maximum coverage. If your teeth are healthy and you go twice a year for cleaning you are looking at $200 for cleanings out of pocket, much less than the $600 it would cost to buy insurance. I just negotiate with my dentist and pay with credit card (yay airmiles!)
 
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I have to get health insurance through Obamacare. It sucks for sure, and I have $4000 deductible. There is no longer individual private insurance in NV.

Don't waste your time with dental. Most plans costs about 50/month and have a $1000 maximum coverage. If your teeth are healthy and you go twice a year for cleaning you are looking at $200 for cleanings out of pocket, much less than the $600 it would cost to buy insurance. I just negotiate with my dentist and pay with credit card (yay airmiles!)
If it was just for me, I would never get dental. But with a family of 5 x 2 cleaning. Even at 100 a cleaning, thats 1k....
 
Going to be in same boat as you soon. I was considering getting Liberty Health Share. It's not technically insurance and they don't cover chronic issues. No obamacare penalty. Max plan for me and my wife is 300/month with a 1k annual deductible and $1mill/event payout. Go to their website and check it out. Unfortunately they don't cover dental/vision/prescription but supposedly give discounts with it. It's different but good if you are young and healthy. Also you can have both this and a HDI. I'm probably just gonna do this until next year tho.
 
Hi all and especially fellow locums doc. I am now full locums and can not tell you how freeing it is.

But where do you guys go to get Health and Dental especially if you live in Texas? I have health for my family for another year but when I looked at what is available online, the plans are terrible (and I have a super high deductible terrible plan now) and restrictive on who I can see.

Where do you guys go for your health plan?

Also, is keeping dental worth it and what are you paying? I am currently quoted for 120/mo to keep my Cobra plan which seems OK. I looked online and I have seen it as low as 70/mo for a family but haven't checked on what they cover. So that would cost me 1400/yr which covers all cleaning/xrays and pays a part of any other work. Even if we went self pay, each cleaning costs about 125 so that costs about $1250 a year for 10 cleanings.

So is it worth it or should I just go self pay?

Welcome to the real world. It's pretty shocking to buy health insurance for the first time isn't it? My family of six pays $1200 a month for medical and dental and I'm told by older people in other states that I'm getting a good deal. The nice thing about being self-employed is it is all deductible and I have a 46% marginal tax rates, so I'm really only paying 55% of that. The panel is fine but the deductible is quite high. Can't remember exactly but I think it's $6K this year.

We pay Dental but it's priced by the family, so with 6 of us getting 2 cleanings a year and x-rays once a year, I look at it as mostly just buying a big chunk of our dental care with pre-tax dollars.
 
If it was just for me, I would never get dental. But with a family of 5 x 2 cleaning. Even at 100 a cleaning, thats 1k....

Dental insurance is much less insurance, and more like buying coupons towards dental payments.
 
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Welcome to the real world. It's pretty shocking to buy health insurance for the first time isn't it? My family of six pays $1200 a month for medical and dental and I'm told by older people in other states that I'm getting a good deal. The nice thing about being self-employed is it is all deductible and I have a 46% marginal tax rates, so I'm really only paying 55% of that. The panel is fine but the deductible is quite high. Can't remember exactly but I think it's $6K this year.

We pay Dental but it's priced by the family, so with 6 of us getting 2 cleanings a year and x-rays once a year, I look at it as mostly just buying a big chunk of our dental care with pre-tax dollars.
So where dd you go to for your health insurance?

I may look into the health share insurance but have no clue if our docs even take it. Going through the online searches is a mess and most plans are expensive and have limited coverage.
 
Do you have any you would recommend? I looked on your website, but it looks like your recommendations for insurance agents are primarily for disability insurance policies.

Unlike disability, you need one in your own state and keeping a list of health insurance agents in all 50 states isn't easily monetized.

Just google "nearest health insurance agent." There are 30 within a 10 mile radius of my house. If he sounds reasonable on the phone, go see him.
 
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what about things like on the job occurrences while doing locums? for example: needle stick. how does it work to get HIV tested/ start prophylactic meds, etc? does your private health insurance cover that? what if you're doing a locum on the side of a full-time job with benefits? who foots the bill for that and how do you broach that issue?

thinking of locum but i cant find any answers to questions like these.
 
what about things like on the job occurrences while doing locums? for example: needle stick. how does it work to get HIV tested/ start prophylactic meds, etc? does your private health insurance cover that? what if you're doing a locum on the side of a full-time job with benefits? who foots the bill for that and how do you broach that issue?

thinking of locum but i cant find any answers to questions like these.

Employee health at the facility you work at should cover it. The same with TB testing.
 
Employee health at the facility you work at should cover it. The same with TB testing.

This is not true. Our SDG was not covered under the hospital Employee health. Our group did this and essentially just put the cost on the doctor.
 
This is not true. Our SDG was not covered under the hospital Employee health. Our group did this and essentially just put the cost on the doctor.

so you're taking your life into you own hands when doing a locum?
 
I've never had an issue doing anything at occupational health at any hospital.

in terms of them not covering the cost of an incident, or you just haven't had the misfortune of having an incident yet?
 
in terms of them not covering the cost of an incident, or you just haven't had the misfortune of having an incident yet?

Both. I had a TB exposure last year. The hospital covered the quantiferon testing. I was part-time "locums" with the CMG at that hospital.
 
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