Self-employed and medically uninsured? Health insurance for individuals is soon to be affordable for you!
Being a self-employed individual in the United States is sometimes a bigger pain than it is a blessing. At tax time, you feel it the most. You can see the discrimination between you and a corporate employee making the same hourly compensation as you by simply comparing your tax return amount to his or hers. They always seem to make out better than you. It's the same with health insurance. Work for a big company, and you'll get the best health insurance rates possible, but apply for health insurance for individuals and your wallet will surely wince! The exorbitant premiums you must pay will more than likely keep you from getting insured. This fact has been taken into account by the new Health Reform Law, and now the Feds are doing something to make health insurance affordable for you.
Health insurance for individuals is expensive simply because you aren't bringing any business to the insurer but yourself. Like other products for sale, the greater the amount you purchase, the cheaper the cost per item charged. Because large corporations can bring more business to insurers, they are given the best premium rates per employee. It's as simple as that. You can't blame the insurers. After all, health insurance is a business, not a humanitarian undertaking. Numbers are important to their bottom line, as it is for any business. The more they sell, the greater the profits. As a lone wolf, you've had to face the fact: alone, you'll pay the most.
In its Health Reform Law, the federal government undertook bringing affordable insurance to all Americans. Recognizing that many selfemployed people were uninsured because of the price tag on health insurance for individuals (as well as for small businesses), the framers of the law saw fit to include a requirement that aims to bring insurance cost for the 'lone wolf' down to the same price as the corporate man or woman now pays. In the near future, health insurance for individuals will be available at group rates. This will be made possible by the proposed health insurance 'exchanges'.
The concept of health insurance exchanges is a brilliant solution to the inequity the self-employed individual now endures. These exchanges will be available throughout the country. Each exchange will represent a pool of many thousands, perhaps millions, of people up for health insurance. At each exchange, health insurance providers will make their products available, and the number of people in a given exchange will be treated as a group, just as the employees of a corporation are treated as a group. The people who will belong to the exchange will be owners of small businesses and the self-employed (or unemployed) individual. Being a part of a group, these individuals are no longer required to pay premiums at their highest rates. They'll get them at group or exchange discounts.
If you're a self-employed individual looking for medical insurance, you're in luck. Shortly you'll be able to purchase health insurance at attractive corporate rates. It makes you wonder if the government, having done this, might not soon turn to the inequities in the tax code that penalize self-employment. For now let's be happy we can finally get health insurance for individuals at affordable prices. We can be healthy and live!