What You Should Know About Self Employed Health Insurance
Reader question:
I’m about to start my own business. What do I need to know about health insurance?
Abigail
Great question.
Having self employed health insurance is more important than even having health insurance while you are employed by a company. Consider the fact that all of your health insurance is funded by yourself, and if you don’t have it, should something happen to you that puts you in the hospital for a few days, you’ll be out of work. And if you’re self employed, you don’t get paid for things like sick days and vacation time, so not only will you have a huge hospital bill, but you will also be out several days of work with no recompense.
Getting health insurance if you are self employed is financially responsible even if nothing happens to you medically while you have it. The self employed are allowed to claim their health insurance costs on their tax returns as a business expense. For self employed people looking for a good health insurance plan, there are health savings account, which are tailored specifically for the self employed.
If you intend to be self employed, you need to find out what you will do about health insurance before leaving the job you’re at now. Looking for health insurance if you happen to have a pre existing condition, or your family does, can be difficult, and you might have to end up getting insured through your state’s high risk pool, which can be costly.
You might want to save costs and guard your personal information by not employing a health insurance broker. This is understandable, but if you choose to go this route, you will need to put much more effort and research into your search. You will need to understand the different terms and policy speak that come along with health insurance plans so that you can be sure that the plan will cover you and your family. Or you could choose to go with a broker. They cost, but they also know more about you, although they tend to be pushy.
As mentioned before, a good plan for the self employed is a health savings account. These are trusts with a bank or credit union which are tax exempt and are paid into by you, in the form of cash. In order to work, they have to come side by side with a health insurance plan with a high deductible. It gives you greater coverage than your average plan.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
NY health insurance for self employed and small businesses
Working for a small business or being self employed in New York used to mean the difference between whether you were or were not covered by a NY health insurance plan. Unlike large companies, which are able to afford to provide health insurance to their many employs, self employed people and small businesses struggle to do the same while still keeping their heads above the water. Recent legislation in New York concerning NY health insurance, though, has reformed practices and may help New Yorkers out with small business group health insurance and self employed health insurance.
It may not do much good for the self-employed who only employ themsevles, but for any business that has two or more employees, they are able to take out a group health insurance plan in the state of New York. Unlike many states, though, one of the good things about this is that you don’t have to make every employee get the health insurance–it’s elective. Therefore they can choose not to get it, and small businesses will have to pay out a lot less.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.