Wrestling With Health Care

As I considered early retirement, health care and health insurance for my wife and I were paramount concerns. Eventually, after wrestling with these issues, I came to a satisfactory conclusion within our limited price range. I want to share with you what I considered some of the major variables and constraints during that period of search and decision making.
There were six considerations that concerned me as I sifted between various health care alternatives.
(1) Affordability: What the premiums cost was important since we would be on a very tight budget.
(2) Length of coverage: Would we be covered until Medicare took effect or could we be dropped early?
(3) Pre-existing conditions: I had fought an earlier bout with lymphoma, which although five years in remission, probably made me uninsurable. I definitely wanted to get my wife on a non-cancelable policy before the same thing happened to her.
(4) High end coverage: A $100,000 upper limit was not going to be any protection in the event of a million dollar illness.
(5) Low end coverage: If you have $10,000 out-of-pocket expenses per person, per year, before 100% insurance coverage takes effect then long term illnesses like cancer or congestive heart disease can wipe you out financially in a few consecutive years, especially if both husband and wife need operations in the same year.
(6) Quality of health care and coverage: What are the limitations and exclusions? I had one company group policy that limited diagnostics to $300. That is barely one set of blood work labs! If you go into a doctor with an illness or complaint the first thing he or she will do is to run tests to get more information. A single CT Scan can be $1,200 plus another $300 to read it. Is preventive care covered or does that come out of the deductible? Are the in-network preferred providers cutting edge or 2nd rate? Cheap coverage may be exactly that.

With these six points in mind, I decided to use the VA health care system where my pre-existing condition was not a factor and my wife purchased a high deductable policy from Anthem. I hope these six points will add some clarity to your search for health care as you begin doing your own homework in this area.