[Jewels36]

Can anyone give me info about Florida Individual Health Insurance? We currently have Anthem BC/BS Individual Health Insurance for the self-employed because my husband is technically an independent contractor. It is my understanding that we will not be able to keep this insurance after relocating and will need to get covered by another company.

Does anyone have any info on individual coverage for the self -employed in Florida? What companies are available to chose from? What are the policies like? We currently have a PPO with a $25 dollar co-pay and a $500 deductible per family member/max $1500 entire family. No referal required for visits to a specialist, etc. My daughter is rated high risk so our monthly insurance payment is $472.

Does Florida have a comparable policy? Will it be more money?

[kimwick]

My husband is also self employed we have blue cross blue sheild it runs about 250. a month. I have health ins. through my work. The state also has ins. for children. You pay according to your income. some people pay 15 and up. It is called Florida Kid care. You just send in an application they will let you know your payment. The state of Fla wants all children to be covered up to the age of 18. We pay 130 for our children through it. It covers everything. Hope this is helpful

[Jewels36]

Thanks Kimwick! This was helpful. Do you know if there is an income cap on Florida Kid care? If there is, what do they use to determine the income of self employed individuals? Do they look at monthly deposits, or the bottom line of Schedule C income after deductions, etc?

[kimwick]

I belive after. I am almost positive. Go to their web site to do an application. I know we send in after every thing is deducted. We show our gross than deduct to show what our income is after expenses.

[Jewels36]

Thanks. I visited the website. I am not sure if we will qualify. It looks like there is an income cap of around $33,000. I will have to ask my husband what our bottom line was on our tax return for 2005. He handles all of that kind of stuff and I have no idea what our income was for last year. I know we had a lot of expenses so our adjusted gross income may have been pretty low. This year he has earned quite a bit more but our expenses have also been much higher with him working in Florida and commuting back and forth to KY so often. He was staying in a hotel but that got old real fast, not to mention expensive. We are now renting a condo for him. We also have our home in KY and a rental home in Texas. The home in Texas was vacant for about 6 months this year because we were trying to decide if we wanted to sell or rent it so we should definitely show a a large loss for this property.

Who knows, maybe we will qualify when it is all said and done.

Anyway, you have been very helpful on more thatn one occassion and I really appreciate it.

[suzmyers]

Florida Kid Care is not only for those with low income... it is for those who can't find affordable coverage for their children. My income was over their "cap" and i got it because I didn't have a position that would cover families, only me. You will still qualify, but you want to apply as soon as you get here. The funds run out for Kidcare insurance towards the end of the calendar year and they stop taking new applications. (remember Fl is an income tax free state)

[Jewels36]

Suzmyers,

Thanks so much. That is good to know. I searched through the website but didn't see any indicators as to there being exceptions to the income cap. I am really glad you told me about this. I will check into it as soon as we get to the area.

[Jammie]

Does anyone have any links to check out health insurance in Fla? We both have insurance through our employers right now, but don't know if it will be available to us when we move down there. Since my husband will be semi-retired, we're not sure what would be offered. I have learned that SC is one of the states where you can buy private health insurance very reasonably. In SD, the premiums for private health insurance for a middle aged couple is well over $1,000 a month and that's just unaffordable.

[pslOldTimer]

I don't have any links; I can only relate my own experience. It was not good.

I owned a retail store. I only had a couple of employees and they happened to be covered by their wives' policies; both of their wives were nurses. So, we had no company group policy. I looked into various "groups" such as the Chamber of Commerce, but nothing fit our needs for any lower price than we could get individually.

My wife is a home health professional (physical thereapist) who is under contract to the VNA, and as such is considered self employed. So, she had no group coverage, either.

We initially signed up with Nationwide Insurance for an individual family policy. The premiums weren't too terrible at the time, and our best friend is the Nationwide agent. We have all our insurance with them, and always got good service. I believe the rates were around $400/month, but that was more than 15 years ago. We were around 50 years old at the time (your age makes a difference). However, the rates crept up until we were paying in the neighborhood of $700, then Nationwide decided not to offer individual health coverage in Florida any longer. We were given about 10 months to find another company.

We used almost the entire period to research and get quotes, and finally ended up with an individual family policy from Mutual of Omaha. The rates were comparable -- less than $800 per month for the two of us. By the way, these were major medical, catastrophic coverage, only -- the M of O policy had a deductible of $5,000. By this point, we were about 63 years old.

Then, M of O announced that they, also, were going to discontinue individual health coverage to Florida residents. Again we and our agent searched for affordable coverage. When we were almost 64, we signed up with a company called Medical Savings Health Insurance. Now, I know that sounds more like a description of the government's program rather than a company, but that was the name they adopted after the federal medical savings plans were approved. The idea is that you obtain a policy with a high deductible (which we always had), and set aside up to $5,000 per year in a tax-advantage medical savings account to cover the deductible. Their rates were the lowest we could find, at about $1,100 per month for the two of us.

We signed up, regardless of the cost, because we only had to make it another year or so before we were eligible for medicare. It's fortunate that we did, because shortly after, I was diagnosed with a severely damaged heart (cardiac myopathy) and spent a week in the hospital plus had a defibrillator installed; the total bills were something like $150K.

Finally, we each reached medicare age (within 4 months of each other, I'm the baby in the family, my wife robbed the cradle ). We signed up with a medicare advantage plan HMO and now receive fantastic coverage from a super organization, which includes 100% of our prescriptions. This is not a supplement plan; we pay only the normal monthly medicare premiums (currently $88.50 per month each; or nearly $200 per month for the two of us). Most seniors have a medicare supplement plan that costs an average $125 per month in addition to the medicare premium, so the cost goes to about $425 per month for two. If medicare costs that much, I don't see how anyone expects to get individual coverage for that price or less!

To specifically answer your question about whether it will be available, research all of the insurance companies you can find to see if they offer coverage in Florida. A Google search for "florida individual health insurance" will bring up dozens of valid links. Then, see if you can discover how long they intend to stay in Florida!