[zitterbewegung]

If you want a lower payment per year go pick a really large company (the larger the pool the less you will pay).

My mom pays half of what I pay and she gets family insurance while I get a single person insurance. Her pool is a large grocery store company.

[tptacek]

$18,000 for a family is high but within the range of what insurance costs today. Family coverage on the small group market (<50 employees, which is where Matasano was at), which approximates the individual market in price, was ~$1100/mo a few years ago.

(I just looked it up and, weirdly, average premiums on the large group market in 2017 were higher than those in the small group market; on the small market, they're around $17,000, and in the large market, $19,000).

[snuxoll]

That’s still roughly the case, I work for a medical billing company owned by a physician group, we have a pretty large group and are essentially self-insured.

I pay ~$220-ish a month for my family of three, the company pays $800+/mo. Boy am I glad to work for a company that pays such a large chunk of my benefits, many other places cover maybe 50% of your dependent costs.

[bobcostas55]

You're still the one paying the $800, the only benefit is you get to do it with pre-tax money. It's not like that money comes out of the aether, it's part of your compensation.

[snuxoll]

Yes, but taken in context it’s still a huge benefit. You have to keep in mind we have a lot of employees making much more median salaries, a medical biller or coder making in the mid 10’s to low 20’s an hour gets the same benefit I do as a $89K/yr DevOps engineer.

[mobilefriendly]

The injustice of the system is that self-employed have to pay with after-tax dollars while your employer can deduct the cost of providing those benefits.

[tptacek]

As I understand it (I hope I understand this, because I rely on it), LLC principals are allowed to deduct the cost of health insurance.

[mobilefriendly]

Unfortunately neither Christian Medishare nor our out-of-pocket health care payments are deductible.

https://www.medishare.com/blog/is-healthcare-sharing-tax-ded...

[tptacek]

Any HN conversation that starts out as a debate about Obamacare and ends up saving someone a few thousand dollars a year is a good conversation, so you are very welcome.

Health insurance prices are a nightmare. Please don't let me come off as sounding like I don't think they are. The goal of the ACA was fix that problem, and though it fixed some very important problems, it surely didn't fix that one.

[mancerayder]

Interesting! Are there no other options available? This is clearly an inferior option for the self-employed. I'd go with another provider with a higher premium and without this curious shares thing. How is that legally not health insurance? Baffling. What state are you in?

[chrisweekly]

Tangent: people tend to fixate on "LLC" as if it were the only reasonable corp structure for small outfits. S-Corp is often a better choice.

[tptacek]

It's just the cheapest one to set up. I was assuming that if someone's self-employed and not deducting insurance, they're probably a sole proprietorship, and are probably sensitive to accounting costs.

[dustingetz]

my accountant never allowed me to do this in PA

[tptacek]

As I understand it, and your accountant is an expert while I am not, you have to be actually self-employed --- not moonlighting or doing side-work, with your money all coming in through the LLC --- and your spouse can't be eligible for group coverage through their job.

[mancerayder]

False, as a self-employed person you can consider this a business expense. I have for two years with no issues. One-person LLC.

[zitterbewegung]

18k for a small business is typical. My mom pays much less than that because she doesn’t even make anything near 18k. For a small business it limits who you can hire because their take home pay would be 0.

Basically what I’m saying is the loss ratio for a bigger pool will be much lower than a smaller one. For insurance companies who charge premiums if you are in say a Bigcorp sized pool compared to a small business size pool the bigcorp pool will be larger and can have smaller premiums .