Saturday, October 6, 2007

The Challenges of Finding the Best Self Employed Health Insurance for You

Health insurance is not cheap, and with premiums continuing to skyrocket alongside the price of health care, the outlook is not bright. For the self employed, the issue of health insurance is one that hits right in the wallet. Since self employed individuals are unable to qualify for group discounts offered to large companies, then the cost of self employed health insurance becomes of foremost concern. Deciding on what type of self employed health insurance to choose depends a great deal on the current state of your business and how you expect it to grow in the next few years.

If your business is run solely by yourself (i.e. no partners or employees) then you are certainly in the toughest self employed insurance situation. That is because the most expensive insurance rates occur for policies that are granted to only a single person. There are two reasons for this. First of all, small groups or individuals are not able to collectively bargain with the insurance agency. Insurance agencies are more likely to offer favorable rates to those who are willing to bring in many policy holders at once. Another reason is that the more people who are insured by a single policy, the more the risk is spread amongst all policy holders. This lowers the risk for the insurance agency and allows them to offer more favorable rates for coverage.

If you expect your company to grow in the near future to include employees or partners, it is probably a good idea to consider purchasing temporary health insurance. Temporary policies are not as robust as permanent coverage, but they can get you through until the time comes that you can qualify for a group discount.

Fortunately, Congress has noted the plight of self employed individuals. Now, most of the costs of self employed health insurance are tax deductible, and other legislation is pending that should ease the burden further.

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