John, in California don't forget Blue Shield... They offer individual plans for Californians, and last time I researched this (2006ish) I found the plans better than the offerings by BC/Anthem.
In particular, BS offered a high-deductible PPO plan *with* prescription coverage (Shield Spectrum PPO). Also, Blue Shield is a non-profit, vs. the for-profit Blue Cross/Anthem-Wellpoint, which may or may not suit your tastes. On Aug 21, 2010, at 4:18 AM, John C. Fox wrote: > Hi Mark: > > In California, you have two major options: Kaiser, which is an HMO that will > take anyone, and requires you to visit their hospitals and practitioners, and > Blue Cross/Anthem, which provides a range of private insurance for > individuals ranging from cheap "catastrophic" coverage with high deductibles > and co-pays. If you're by yourself, you pay through the nose for a single > person policy. If you're married, and have any kind of spouse or domestic > partner, and at least one dependent child, there's the possibility of > creating a small group pool which gives you the advantage of getting an > expensive policy that at least give pretty decent coverage. > > For my wife and child and I, we started with 3 individual BC/Anthem policies, > then when we learned how to form a group, we upgraded to that. It took a > bunch of paperwork, but the gist of it is that, in the City of SF at least, > you can add your partner/spouse to business license, which then unlocks > things. At any rate, ee now pay $992 a month for the three of us, and it's > quite shitty by the standard of other developed countries, but by California > standards it's decent. > > I ended up using an insurance broker, contact info for whom I'm happy to > provide off-list. > > Hope this helps. > > Best, > > John > > --- > John C. Fox > Founder > GroupSmarts, LLC > MemoryMiner - "Record memories...tell stories" > http://www.memoryminer.com > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > ------------------------------------ > > MacSB email guidelines: http://tinyurl.com/2g55d6 > Use MacSB-Talk for off topic messages: > http://groups.google.com/group/macsb-talk > Yahoo! Groups Links > > >
