What if I can't afford health insurance?

What if I can't afford health insurance?

Elliot Matloff (President and Broker, The Matloff Company) gives expert video advice on: How do I get health insurance?; How does getting married or divorced affect my health insurance?; How does having children affect my health insurance? and more...

If you can't afford insurance in today's world, then, in many cities there's county hospitals. County hospitals will take you for free if you have a serious problem. The problem is, if you don't have a serious problem, let's say that you were having the beginnings of diabetes, that's something that doesn't just exacerbate immediately and you don't see it right away. It takes years before it really does damage to your body. If you had a health insurance policy, you might have been able to catch that condition early and live normal life expectancy. What most people have a misconception about is that they don't realize that they can go to a very high deductible policy to cover the big picture. It's not unusual for people to buy a $5,000 deductible health insurance policy so that if they have a catastrophe, they're still covered. Even on high deductible policies, you can go into a doctor's office and you'll get the discounts, because they'll be a PPO provider, for example. If the doctor charges $400 for a procedure, but you're using your $5,000 deductible policy, the doctor will have to reduce his fees to $100 or $150, and that might be something affordable. Most people are scared away by expensive health insurance policies, but a high deductible might only be $100 per month. I have two children who are nineteen and twenty-one. I will pay for their health insurance premiums the rest of their life because I don't want to have a situation where one of my children forgets to pay an insurance premium and I have to come up with a half a million dollars of my retirement income to pay for their medical claim. Sometimes by just talking to the insurance client and finding out a little bit more about them, I can usually figure out a solution to a health insurance problem.