We all know that health insurance can lock you into a job. You don’t dare switch companies or start your own business unless you know that you can get coverage at a price you can afford.
What probably haven’t thought about is that retiree group health insurance can also lock you into the city where you’re [...]
What Jane Says: Health Insurance
- What health insurance reform will do for you, starting this year
- POSTED 03.21.10
It’s a historic day for health care in America. The House will pass the Senate bill and the President will sign. The reconciliation effort–odds and ends of the House and Senate compromise–still has to run some roadblocks in the Senate, but soon we’ll have a national program for covering the uninsured. The major provisions don’t [...]
- Go to China. Get your tonsils out.
- POSTED 03.15.10
My friend Joe is a trombonist, subject to terrible infections of the throat. He had seven or eight of them in the past year. Twice, he needed emergency care to pierce and drain abcesses—the most painful thing he has ever endured, he says.
To stop these infections, doctors have told him he has to have [...]
- COBRA hates you (Part II)
- POSTED 01.19.10
Another Cobra scandal, reported by the Los Angeles Times’ David Lazarus. Stacy Owens, 25, had her Aetna COBRA policy canceled. The company never told her about it. She discovered the cancellation in November, when a bill from one of her doctors wasn’t paid.
Turns out, the premium had gone up in August–but she wasn’t told about [...]
- COBRA hates you
- POSTED 01.4.10
McLatchy reports on a man who lost his COBRA health insurance because he accidentally underpaid his November bill by 2 cents. He sent the pennies but it ultimately took an inquiry by the Miami Herald to get him reinstated. COBRA doesn’t give you a grace period. If you pay late, you’re cut off in the [...]
