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by dataflow 1620 days ago
> Losing my job is insanely scary (losing healthcare)

While this might be unusual, as I understand it, nothing really prevents you from getting your own insurance. Even if your health insurance premium were to cost $1000/month (which it likely doesn't), if your pay bump would be > $12k/year (+ tax) by moving as a SWE (which it probably would be), you could still go without a job for a whole year and still maintain your insurance. It would obviously be infeasible for someone in a profession with much lower income, but from what you said it sounds like it would be an option.
1 comments
Broken_Hippo 1620 days ago
It has been a while since I've lived in the US, but I think it is completely possible to pay $1000/month for health insurance. For a single person, a family is more. Employers subsidize your insurance, after all. I was paying couple hundred a month for two people - subsidized - and that was years ago. A family plan was even more.

Even then, you have to have money to use it. On top of the insurance premiums, you'll have to pay a deductible. You'll probably pay $3000 (more or less) before the insurance even starts to pay anything, and then you'll have to pay a few thousand more before things start being free.

Prescriptions probably won't count towards these totals. If you are lucky, you will have good coverage. If not, you might be out a few hundred a month for a single drug. Depending. I mean, people have been rationing insulin.

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heavyset_go 1620 days ago
> It has been a while since I've lived in the US, but I think it is completely possible to pay $1000/month for health insurance.

I just looked on healthcare.gov, and any plan that is comparable to a plan an employer would give you costs over $900 a month in premiums alone. The plans start to get "good", if you can call them that, at $1k. The last time I used COBRA, my premiums were $2k.

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dataflow 1620 days ago
Oh, for a family it can definitely be more; I was citing numbers for a single person. For a single person it depends on your age I think. If you're young then it doesn't need to be anywhere near that high, but it of course gets higher as you get older.
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Broken_Hippo 1619 days ago
It'll be barely below $1k for a single person, no matter the age, and it'll be considerably worse than employer-provided insurance. Young folks generally cannot afford health care, even with insurance.
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