How to Get the Best Individual Health Policy in 2019
The options are very different if you are buying insurance on your own. After a tumultuous few years -- when many insurers stopped selling individual health insurance or repeatedly boosted premiums by double digits -- the market is turning around. More insurers are selling individual policies again or expanding into new counties and states, and now fewer areas are left with only one insurance option.
"It hit bottom last year, when we had a lot of exits from big insurers," says Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which studies the health insurance market. "But the carriers who stayed in the market have figured out how to make money and develop different provider networks, and they understand the customer better." For example, many counties in Ohio and Pennsylvania had only one insurer in 2018, but more areas will have two or three insurers selling individual coverage in 2019, she says.
Paul and Nancy Melquist of ShoreÂview, Minn., started buying their own coverage in 2017, after Paul retired at age 58 from a career in the defense industry. Because the Melquists don't have many regular medical expenses, they chose the plan that had the lowest premium but also a $6,600 deductible for each person. Even so, the Melquists paid $1,250 per month in premiums. Their only medical expense for the year ended up being their annual physicals. "We paid $15,000 for two physicals, which was not a satisfying financial transaction," Paul says. They did contribute money to an HSA. Their premiums
