Thread: Health Insurance brainstorm

I resigned from my job. It was extremely stressful and I'm glad to be rid of that burden. I don't have health insurance now though. My father, having worked in the insurance industry for 28 years, believes this is a serious issue that needs to be solved with a 'real job' that has an insurance plan. I understand his point of view and I know that living without health insurance is very dangerous. It got me thinking about how insurance works and I got this idea.

When you pay into an insurance policy, you are basically putting your money into a pool that many people pay into. The more people you have, the lower the amount you have to pay. When someone has a medical need, they make a claim, it's investigated and money is paid out to the person in need.

Why would you need an insurance company to do this?

Why can't a group of pro dancers and teachers create a plan, hire an independent insurance agent to handle the paperwork and investigate the claims and cut the checks? Call it the professional dancers insurance policy for your particular area or state? It's almost like a community credit union for insurance.

Creativity has to extend beyond choreography.

Thoughts?

There are some other groups of people who have done this and it seems to work well for them from what I have heard. I would prefer to stay with a larger insurer, but if you want more information on these organizations, take a look here: Health Insurance Co-op, Cooperative - What Is a Health Insurance Co-op - Cooperative or look up health insurance cooperatives. Good luck!

I've always been puzzled as to why health insurance co-operatives aren't more common in the U.S.

I think it's illegal to form a group solely for the purpose of buying insurance, but I'm not sure why. The group has to have other purposes.

It wouldn't be for the sole purpose of insurance. You would have a professional organization that discusses and handles other important issues that professionals of that group encounter, one of those being insurance. Like SAG.

Thank you Mahsati. That's exactly what I'm thinking about.

A small business co-op was attempted by our insurance agent in order to get better rates for a group of small businesses. Sounded like a good idea but no insurance company was willing to underwrite it.

If you had enough money in a pool, you could start a self-funded insurance plan. Not sure how much you would have to have to start off one, though.

It might work well until the first catastrophic claim.