How To Get Better Health Insurance If You're Self Employed | TIPS TO SAVE ON YOUR MEDICAL EXPENSES

Hey everyone, Victoria S. Dorsano here, and if you are self-employed or just looking for some different health insurance options, I'm gonna run through some really cool options today that you have probably never heard of and that can probably save you a good amount of money. But before I dive in, if you can give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel, I would greatly appreciate that. So I really wanted to make this video because of my own personal experience being self-employed, and I know that there are a ton of people out there, especially in the US where I'm located, that people that have transferred over to being self-employed this year or last year due to the pandemic. They've tried out being in the gig economy for the first time ever and realized that, wow, our health insurance here in the U.S. is really heavily tied to our employment in a corporation or a bigger business. And when you go solo or you are in the gig economy or you're self-employed, it's a little bit tricky to find options that are going to work for for you that aren't going to literally cost you an arm and a leg. So I'm going to run through 6 different insurance options, some of which you probably know of and some of which you've probably never heard of, and show you a little bit about how you can combine some of these to get the best results for you and save a lot of money in the long run. I'm also going to share some really awesome resources that can save you money on a ton of different medical procedures and things like that too, so stick around to the end where I can share all my tips and tricks about how I save money on my medical bills. So the first health insurance option is the traditional healthcare marketplace option, you know, the ones that you guys are probably the most familiar with. And these are, you know, usually can be subsidized if you're only making a certain amount. So this might be a great option for if you are just starting out self-employed and you're not anticipating making a ton of money this upcoming year or whenever you're applying for this health insurance, and you can get a decent government subsidy where you can, you know, where the cost of your monthly premiums can be greatly reduced by utilizing some subsidy from the government. So most of these traditional marketplace plans, you know, can vary a lot in what you pay even with the subsidies. So obviously you want to choose something that's going to be best suited for your lifestyle, the medications you need, and all of that. So it's important to really, you know, choose specifically on those things and look at what's going to be covered and all that good stuff. Personally, I chose an HMO just because I love the medical group that I'm a part of, and oftentimes it's a lot cheaper of premiums to go with an HMO. But if you love to be able to have the freedom to choose a bunch of different providers in the area, PPO is generally going to be your best option to do so without having to pay out-of-network fees. Because with HMO, you're traditionally just paying for the in-network. And if you want to go out of network, it's really expensive. So PPO, if you want to kind of venture into that realm, that's what that means. So just a little terminology if you're not familiar. Either way, this is a great option for just people, again, starting out in the self-employed economy or gig economy and just trying to get their footing and figuring out a plan that's going to work for them when they're not making all that much money to start with. With. Now, if you are making a decent amount of money as a self-employed individual, or if you're in the gig economy and you're making, you know, upwards of $50,000 a year, you're going to want to go for, you know, a private health insurance company. And it's going to cost you a little bit more. You can still choose, you know, a plan that's going to be a lower deductible, um, but might have, you know, higher monthly premiums because of that. Or you can choose a plan that has lower monthly premiums, but you have you know, a really high deductible or high out-of-pocket expense. So it kind of just depends again on your lifestyle. There's a lot of different ways to tweak that equation and figuring out what works best for you. So those are probably the two most familiar, you know, options that a lot of us know about because that's, you know, the private health insurance companies. Those are usually what are contracted with when we are working for an employer. So, you know, big companies that we know of like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, et cetera. Those are the ones we know about because, They're usually ones that are contracted with those employers and we're familiar with them. Now, there are some lesser-known options that I'm a really, really big fan of, of either using independently or in conjunction with some certain other health insurance options that can really be advantageous to you and save you a lot of money in the long run and still get you really great coverage. One of these options is called direct primary care, and direct primary care, or DPC, is basically a system in which there's a clinic and you pay, you know, instead of paying the health insurance companies, you're paying a monthly kind of fee or membership to this clinic in exchange for almost unlimited primary care services. So you'll get, you know, your immunizations, your checkups, your physicals, blood panels, a lot of minor procedures and things like that can be covered. So kind of like your basic wellness and primary care needs can be covered through DPC clinics. Direct primary care can be a really great option if you have a large family and a lot of young kids and they're always getting sick and you're always having to have doctor's visits and taking them in and, you know, racking up those copays. Direct primary care really makes it affordable for families to join because typically there'll be like an individual fee of like $75 for the month. And then if you add your whole family, it's only $125 or $140 a month for the entire family to be added and to be able to use that clinic. For all their primary care needs without any additional expenses added on for primary care, which is pretty great. Again, if you have little kids, a lot of these clinics too allow 24/7 access to the doctors. You can schedule remote visits over your phone, which I think can be really helpful if you're like a new parent and you're kind of just a little precautious and maybe your kid bumped something, their knee on something, and you're worried that they broke something and you just want a quick eval with a doctor. It's just a really great accessible way to make that, that, you know, to cut out the middleman of the insurance company in the process and be able to just truly have a really great caring relationship with your primary care physician. And again, the monthly membership for these things is very low in comparison to what you pay for health insurance. However, the downfall is that you could have a big accident or, you know, have an injury in a sport or something like that, and that's not going to be covered at a DPC clinic. So even though you're paying that membership fee of, let's say, like a $75 monthly fee to the DPC clinic to have all your primary care needs covered, you're not necessarily going to have all of your emergency needs covered and those kind of bigger procedural things that, you know, can happen. And that's why I'm a big fan of combining direct primary care with ancillary insurance. Ancillary insurance is honestly really awesome. I didn't really learn too much about it until last year, and I wish I had learned about it sooner because it probably could have saved me a lot of money in the long run. But ancillary insurance is something where you get a policy like accident and illness policy or accident injury policy and then a critical illness policy or things that are smaller individual policies based on your risk. So for me, for example, I'm an athlete. I had an ACL injury a few years ago. I'm pretty scared of retearing that knee, that ACL ligament, and I really want to cover my butt in case I do have another injury of some sort that's going to require a lot of MRIs and surgery and things like that because it's expensive. And having something like an ancillary injury policy where you pay anywhere from $15 to $30 a month and get covered up to $10,000, that's pretty good in case you get, you know, in an accident or something where you really are going to need to have to meet like a lot of out-of-pocket expenses right on your own. So having something like direct primary care and an ancillary you know, critical illness or accident policy can be really beneficial. And you're still only paying about, you know, on average between the two of them, let's say a range of $100 to $150 per month. So speaking of the combination, so having ancillary insurance, like I mentioned, in direct primary care can be a coverage option. There are some blind spots to it, like if you have an emergency that is going to cost you more than $10,000 or whatever your coverage limit is with that ancillary option. So what I did this year is that I chose to have a commercial health insurance option like Blue Cross Blue Shield and chose an option that has a lower monthly premium, but a pretty significantly high deductible and out-of-pocket. But combining that with ancillary insurance, like for me, again, my biggest worry is having another injury happen where I'm gonna have to pay up to that amount of the out-of-pocket, which is pretty high around, you know, $8,700. So if I get my ancillary policy and I'm paying an additional $15 to $30 a month for that, and that covers up to $10,000, then I'm basically covering whatever my out-of-pocket has the potential to be. If I get injured and I have to pay out-of-pocket $8,700 to hit that amount, and then my health insurance is fully covered with Blue Cross Blue Shield at that point, I still had to pay $8,700, which is a lot, right? I can submit all those claims to my ancillary health insurance company, and if those get approved, I get reimbursed for all those out-of-pocket expenses associated to that injury. So it's a pretty sweet deal if you can find a, you know, a direct primary care really that you like or a commercial health insurance that maybe has a lower monthly premium but a higher out-of-pocket, and then combine that with doing something like an ancillary health insurance. Another option that I don't think a lot of people know about is something called a health sharing ministry. Now, this one typically will have some sort of religious affiliation. So if you're not within your faith or practicing a certain type of religion, this might not be for you because there are certain stipulations that, you know, for certain ones that I know in the Christian faith, um, like Samaritan Ministries, you know, you have to have a pastor sign off on something saying that you attended church and certain things like that. But it is a lot cheaper than traditional health insurance. It does not cover a lot of primary care stuff, but it does cover, you know, a lot of the emergency stuff. So that is a much cheaper option. But again, taking into account that it doesn't cover primary care, that might be something that you'd want to combine again with doing a health sharing ministry in combination with something like a direct primary care membership where you pay a certain fee to get access to your primary care provider at any point. And then, you know, have all your emergencies and the bigger things covered through that cost-sharing ministry or health-sharing ministry. So that's another option of how you can combine things and save money with your health insurance as well. And then lastly, this isn't necessarily like a full option, but it does give you some time if you are in transition between jobs and you're not really sure what you're doing for health insurance and you need you still need some coverage, you still need to buy yourself some time, and that's short-term health insurance. This is something that I had gone on before for, I think, a period of like 6 months, and it was still pretty good coverage. It still covers the basics, and that's something that you can get through multiple, you know, companies. But that one's a little bit trickier, and I definitely recommend going through an agent if you're gonna do short-term health insurance because there's a lot of like individualization and personalization that goes on in that process. That I think an agent can really help you with. But again, that's a great option if you just need to buy yourself some time, you're trying to figure things out. You can have that short-term option until, you know, something else kicks in with an employer or something kicks in with COBRA or any of those options. It's just something to look into that's a good interim. Okay, so that's pretty much as far as I'll go with the actual health insurance options out there, but I do want to share a little bit about some really cool ways that I've been able to save money on my medical bills now and, you know, moving forward. Not necessarily retroactively because, you know, with my knee surgery, like, those things already happened. But now I know there's a lot of better options out there. So number 1 is MDsave, and I have used MDsave to cross-reference the actual price of a lot of procedures, of MRIs. Because here's what happens is a lot of the times when you will go in and let's say you break something or you— something's hurting in a joint and you need to get some scans done, whether that's a CT scan or an X-ray or an MRI, they're going to send you and refer you either within the medical network or to the hospital. And those prices are going to be pretty insane. If you have insurance, you may have good coverage on that, but you still might need to pay like upwards of $200, $250 for an MRI, which might be expensive for you. So there's other options out there and you can go to different clinics and just pay a cash pay price and say, hey, I'm not going to use my insurance, I'm just going to prepay or do cash pay. And And oftentimes there's places that do MRIs for much cheaper than what you'll get billed from your insurance by. So, um, MDsave will kind of give you what those prices are and where you can go, and you can cross-reference with your health insurance and be like, is it gonna be cheaper for me to just use my health insurance, or is it gonna be cheaper for me to go through MDsave, find a clinic that's doing it cheaper, and pay independently this cash price? And this has saved me a lot of money and a lot of my clients too, cuz I've recommended this for them. Um, things like colonoscopies and mammograms and things like that that might not be fully covered for you, like especially if you're under the age that they recommend you getting those. But, you know, maybe for whatever reason you needed to get one as a screening or, you know, something like that. It's really great to be able to have a resource that you can pay a lower amount and, you know, also just kind of know for reference what those prices are to begin with because there's not a lot of price transparency in the medical billing community, if you know what I mean. So it's really great to be able to see those prices for yourself. I'll drop that link for MDsave down below and you can check that out. The next tool that I have found incredibly helpful and has probably saved me thousands of dollars at this point is GoodRx. And GoodRx, you can actually download the app or you can, you know, submit your address online, they'll send you an actual physical card. It's for saving on your prescriptions because a lot of these companies year to year will change their, you know, what they're covering. The health insurance companies will change what they're covering in terms of drugs. And if you were on a medication for a long time, or let's say you take insulin and something changes in your coverage, and all of a sudden that price of insulin goes crazy high for you and you're not able to afford that, that's scary because that's a life-saving drug for you if you're a diabetic. So that's why I recommend GoodRx is because you can actually use these as coupons at the pharmacy. And oftentimes when I go to pick up a prescription and it's, you know, higher than I'd like it to be, I'll cross-reference it on GoodRx and I'll say, hey, can you actually not run through my insurance? Can you rerun this prescription through using this coupon on my phone? And they'll do it and it'll be a lot cheaper and I'll save a ton of money. So even if you go to your pharmacy and they've already ran it through and you're checking out and they're saying like, hey, that'll be $60, you can say, hey, give me a second, I'm going to check GoodRx and see if you can rerun it through with this coupon and they'll do it for you, which is amazing. So GoodRx has definitely been a lifesaver in terms of the cost of prescriptions. And lastly, the last tool that I'll use because we haven't talked about dental insurance yet is something called dentalplans.com. And traditional dental insurance typically for self-employed individuals isn't super great. I've had not such a great time using traditional dental insurance with my provider. Usually they're not covering a lot of the things that, you know, like the full amount of cleanings and x-rays and things that I need. And especially if you have anything where you need a cavity filled or anything more than the usual, it's basically not covered under most dental insurance companies. So dentalplans.com is a really affordable website where you can go sign up for a plan, and it's, you know, I think anywhere around like $175 for the whole year. And a lot of the prices are reduced for like a cavity filling and your, your cleaning. So instead of paying like $200 for a cleaning, it can drop down to like $30. A cavity filling can drop down to $50. So it's really, really a great option instead of your traditional dental insurance. So it's a really, really great option instead of the traditional dental insurance to look into dentalplans.com and see what they have to offer and see if it lines up for what you're needing. And it can save you thousands of dollars on these more expensive procedures, like if you have to get veneers or root canal or anything bigger like that, it can save you a ton of money and you can use it as soon as you activate it. So the day that you activate your plan, there's no wait period. A lot of dental insurance plans, you'll have like a 6-month wait period where if you, you know, start and sign up today, you have to wait 6 months until you can actually benefit from anything or use it for anything, which is kind of ridiculous. So with dentalplans.com, you can do it right away and be able to utilize it as soon as possible. And lastly, this brings me to my last resource in terms of dental work and things like that too. A lot of dentist offices are now starting to do membership plans. So instead of, you know, taking insurance, you pay almost like the direct primary care model I was talking about before. You pay the dental office a yearly membership fee, which is oftentimes much cheaper than what you'd be paying for dental insurance to begin with. And you'll get for that yearly membership fee, you'll get like 2 cleanings included 2 sets of x-rays, you know, unlimited examinations if you need those, a huge discount on any kind of dental procedures. So that's another great option that I feel like a lot of people don't know about, you know, the dentists are offering these days too. All right guys, that's all I got. I really hope this was useful for you and that you were able to get some good information, find some ways to save money if you're self-employed and are trying to figure out the medical system and health insurance and all that. I hope I provided some different options for you that are going to line up with your needs, and I really hope this was helpful because I'm a big fan of patient advocacy and trying to make medicine affordable for everybody, especially if you're self-employed. So thanks guys for watching, and before you tune off, if you can give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel, I would be super appreciative so I can keep making awesome content like this for you guys. All right, take care.