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by bruceb 1929 days ago
"I quit my job as an iOS contractor for a big company to focus on a start-up full time, at the same time my wife was 8 months pregnant with our first child."

If you are willing to share, leaving Big Co, at this delicate time, how did you plan family health insurance?
2 comments
mknippen 1929 days ago
To be totally honest, health insurance has been awful as a contractor, and as a start-up entrepreneur. I was working for this large company for over a year, but because I was labeled as a contractor, health insurance was not provided. I have a healthy family, yet we have to pay a ton of money because we're not on a corporate plan.

The solution to the problem was saving up money. I built up 6 months of runway where I knew my family could go without income. We made it last 7 months, and then I found another job to pay the bills while I continued working on start-up.

After literally years of trying to do both, Charge is finally at the stage where it can pay the bills and be my sole focus, but there was way more blood sweat and tears that went into it than I would have ever dreamed.

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SkyPuncher 1929 days ago
You can buy it directly from healthcare.gov.

I did it for 3 years as a contractor. It really wasn't that hard.

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mknippen 1929 days ago
I agree, purchasing it was not the hard part. It was the cost changing by state, specifically for Illinois.

I was previously employed by a company in the state of Michigan, and to match the same coverage was not even possible on healthcare.gov. The closest thing was nearly double the price, and when you're going through your first pregnancy, you take a ton of other factors into account.

In hindsight we probably didn't need the advance plan that we had, but it was (and still is) a major portion of our expenses.

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SkyPuncher 1928 days ago
> I was previously employed by a company in the state of Michigan, and to match the same coverage was not even possible on healthcare.gov. The closest thing was nearly double the price, and when you're going through your first pregnancy, you take a ton of other factors into account.

Well that should be expected since your employer is not longer covering part of the plans cost.

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mknippen 1927 days ago
The bigger change was the difference per state, nearly double. (I paid it 100% out of pocket after I left my employer)
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