Well, it’s that time of year again, health insurance open enrollment, and this year, due to all of the expenses I’ll be incurring for my treatments throughout most of 2024, it’s time to try to try an find a somewhat affordable plan for Michelle and I. This will be the first time I’ve had health insurance in over 10 years. We spent time tonight searching for a health insurance plan that would cover my doctors/medication/hospital visits/etc. as well as local healthcare providers (for Michelle,) but there really is no good option. If you find coverage, it’s crazy expensive, if you want an affordable price, you get no coverage. It really made me consider maintaining my “no insurance” state.

By the way, if you can’t afford health insurance either and don’t already know this, I want to share… at least in my own experience over the last several years, the discount healthcare providers have been giving us for not having health insurance, often referred to as “self-pay,” is around 76%. That’s pretty good if you ask me! So, in spite of this great discount, we opted to try and get a plan for next year that would cover as much as possible since even with that self-pay discount 24% of $56,000.00 is still a whopping $13,440.00.

We ended up choosing a health insurance plan that will cost us about $350/mo. and supposedly claims it will cover what we need covered, keeping our out-of-pocket expenses and deductible pretty low. It really is too expensive, but we can at least afford to carry it through 2024 by using our savings to offset the cost. I really don’t like dipping into savings to be able to pay for it, but it should only be for the duration of next year and it’s better than getting $100,000.00+ bills which I would have to spend potentially the rest of my days paying off, even with the 76% self-pay discount. 🙂