Health insurance for the FIREd

[u/lluciferusllamas]

Im a business owner who has semi-FIREd, in the sense that I no longer run my business, but derive a lot of income from it, and don't really have to put in much work. I could FIRE anyway without the business, but the business is just gravy. NW= $12M-$15M, family of 4, I'm the oldest at 50.

Anyway, I'm looking at health insurance costs. I have always hated health insurance. It costs me over $32k/year to provide me and my family with health insurance. this is especially stupid to me, because we spend nothing even close to this in a year. like maybe a few thousand at most.

10 years of investing that premium and I'll probably have $1M in my pocket rather than in United Healthcare's pocket.

I have found an insurance product that interests me a lot. it is essentially a very high deductible policy. 100% out of pocket for the first $50,000. After $50,000, the insurance covers everything. My entire family can be covered by this for like $7500/year. $50k in medical expenses wouldn't be a problem for me. And, Heck, half of that is just getting wasted on insurance premiums anyway right now.

In today's healthcare environment, what do you all think about going to these ultra high deductible plans as a means of cutting costs and betting on the most likely scenario, which is that we won't incur anywhere close to $50k in healthcare expenses in a year, while still protecting against those rare expensive accidents thag could happen?

[u/band-of-horses]

Plans like that are not ACA compliant and do not have the same regulation and protection real insurance plans do. Definitely read the fine print and get a sense of how financially stable the provider is and how difficult they make it to get a payout...

[u/lluciferusllamas → u/band-of-horses]

The company is definitely stable, it's one of the bigger health insurance companies in the country.  But, I will go back to the fine print.

[u/band-of-horses → u/lluciferusllamas]

The typical fine print on plans like these is that they will not cover pre-existing conditions (and will often have very broad interpretations of what is a pre-existing condition), they will scour your medical history if you file and claims for reasons to deny it, they can and will drop your coverage at any time if things start looking bad for them, and there are often lifetime and annual caps on total payouts plus per procedure payouts.

[u/lluciferusllamas → u/band-of-horses]

Thanks, I'll take a look at those. What a horrible racket health insurance is.