This is a bit political; but relevant - vote for Universal Healthcare (Medicare for All), and this won’t even be a thought for you.<p>I’m from Australia and don’t need to ever worry about health care costs; and you’d never in my life get me to vote to have a system like yours here.<p>I say this not to rant, but to hope in my heart that America can deliver this level of care to its citizens, and free you and your family from this burden.
I pay something like $430/month through Kaiser. My experience there is they are really good unless you need mental health stuff. I would especially recommend cancer—the views of SF from the chemo lounge are spectacular.<p>Kaiser is their own insurer/pharmacy, and works like a mini version of single payer. If you're younger than me (I'm 43) you may find some plans with them that are cheaper.<p>Another option is OneMedical, which is kind of boutique health care for wealthier people, but lets you do a lot more online than most medical services and may be worth a look. <a href="https://www.onemedical.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.onemedical.com</a>
Your best choice will likely be a plan from the ACA. In California, this is <a href="https://www.coveredca.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.coveredca.com/</a>. You can try and get cute and find something like a MEWA, which have theoretically been cleaned up from the disaster that they were in the past (bankrupt and not covering claims.) There's also professional organizations that you can purchase through, but I've never seen one that isn't just a gateway for the ACA.<p>As far as price, just check the market. There should be a way to see prices without even creating an account. The total price to account for is premium*12 + out_of_pocket_max, which should be between $11-15k for the year for a single person regardless of what plan you have. For me, I'm at about $490/month for a $7900 out of pocket max, which puts my total liability at $13780 for the year. Though, it will probably be less than that given that I'm healthy. That said, I'm not in CA.<p>Anyway, good luck! Running your own business is exciting and this is an expense. Also worth noting that your premiums are completely deductible as a self-employed person, which is normally not the case.
We get group insurance (with BC/BS) through a local broker. One thing to have a look at: we found that the high-deductable plans were so much cheaper that we could put enough into everybody's HSA account to cover the deductible and still come out ahead. I think it's one of the best moves we ever made, and I've stress-tested the insurance pretty hard...
I am self-employed as a software contractor. I think my wife and I pay around $500 combined for the two of us via Oscar. We had BC/BS for a while but as two relatively healthy people we opted to reduce our monthly expenses a bit and switch to Oscar when BC/BS raised their prices <i>again</i> at the start of 2019.
I pay $1,050 for myself, my wife, and my son. It is crazy, that is with a $6k+ deductible per person... It is terrible insurance and just for catastrophic.<p>I hope we do Medicare for all. This system is so broken, it is time to learn from Europe, Japan, etc. I don't get why we don't steal great ideas because we are doing terrible.
Family of 4, I pay 1250$ for the cheapest Blue Shield CA plan. I got the plan comparison on <a href="https://www.stridehealth.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.stridehealth.com/</a> but the enrollment period is over already for this year, unless you qualify for an event.
Look at the MarketPlace, HealthSherpa, or ehealthinsurance.<p>I'm not sure the rules on posting links. I'm not associated with any of the above. But whenever I'm relocating and working a contract without benefits. I use those three sites to narrow down my options.
I run a 1-person LLC in NYC. I initially used healthcare.gov for my coverage, but once my business started making money, I found that I was paying a lot for mediocre coverage. The providers I used also stopped offering coverage after 2016/2017, so I decided to switch to TriNet. They are an HR service, but also offer health insurance, which is all I use them for. I also looked at Gusto and JustWorks, but they required 1+ employees. I currently pay about $1500 for me and my family for pretty good coverage from Aetna (including dental and vision).
I don't know how applicable it is, but if you are big enough to have an employee or two, check with whomever you contract with to handle payroll processing and see if they've got an offering. My wife's last gig was for a three-employee company and their payroll provider was able to offer group insurance rates that were pretty competitive.
You’re looking for network healthcare plans? It was news to me to learn about ‘sliding scale’ pricing at many county hospitals. Same for clinics.<p>If you’re young and in good overall health, this might be a choice to consider.
I pay $150/mo using a health sharing service called Christian Healthcare Ministries. There are others not religious in nature like Liberty Health Share. Would be $450 for entire family.