If you could ballpark your income that would be great.
I'm a veteran with a disability rating of 40% after several deployments overseas. This means I get free healthcare for life through the VA(although my family is not covered through the VA, instead through my wife's employer).
If I didn't have VA coverage we'd have to spend $800/mo for me to be added to my wife's plan. Incurring an extra $800/mo out of the gates would have likely been a non-starter.
That was a significant factor in my ability to step out on my own.
It feels like America is really hamstringing our entrepreneurs by not having a medicare-for-all or some other public option.
The parent is an indication of this - he wouldn't have considered starting a business unless his health care was taken care of. Other things like taxes, beaurocracy and legal matters seem extremly convoluted and unfriendly to business when compared to Sweden, which is often painted a socialist.
Convoluted taxes allow big business and the very wealthy to evade them more easily.
Convoluted bureaucracy makes it easy to get ahead by working the loopholes, which you can only do if you’re big enough.
Same thing for other legal matters.
All of this is really a cautionary tale of regulatory capture pushed by vested interests, usually at the expense of working people.
HMO means you have to go to specific providers, and get referrals for any specialists. Silver plan means the deductible is about $2000 per person before insurance starts paying, then various levels of co-insurance until you hit a spending cap of about $7000 per person. Only family doctor and referral specialist visits are fixed price, at $30 and $60 fixed copay, respectively.
EDIT: comparatively speaking, a PPO silver plan (you get to choose your own doctor) would go up to about $800/person/month. And a gold plan with lower deductibles and lower coinsurance would be $1000/person/month and more. Basically, if you end up going to a doctor for anything serious, you end up paying $thousands out of pocket anyway, whether due to monthly premiums on gold, or deductible on lower plans.
In New York, off the top of my head, premiums are something like $250 a month for an individual plan, I think $900 for a family for a high deductible plan that probably won't pay anything next year.
When the subsidies are factored in for a family that earns $50k a year, I think you wind up paying about $70 a month.
If you are not destitute but have a fairly low income (say $35k a year for that family) you qualify for the "Essential Plan" which has a $20 a month premium and a low deductible.
GP figures might exist in NY if it's a) a very low-income situation or b) a generous employer that covers most of the cost, and the employee's contribution is minimal. Neither applies to a typical self-employed family.
With a family of 4, you would get some for of subsidy all the way up to about $100k mAGI.
One important thing to note about that modified adjusted gross income number is there are a few things you can control about it. Like contributions to retirement accounts and college funds will reduce your agi.
$375-400 is the lowest I could find for an individual plan in NY.
It's even more difficult in my case because I can decide on my income ahead of time since it's almost all capital gains. The only way to see how the plans change when your income changes is to delete your current application and resubmit it, fortunately the info is all still there. But you still have to repeat the html and pdf -> spreadsheet process.
It's become very helpful to understand cutoffs like 200% FPL and 218% and 400% and concentrate around there.
I'm happy for ACA as it allows me to contribute to the industry outside the confines of a medium or large company, but it’s clear that the whole healthcare system needs to be burnt to the ground eventually.
But in many cases, I think silver is the sweetspot for anyone who plans to use a moderate amount of healthcare.
Bronze if you just want catastrophic coverage.
The plans above bronze rarely offer much benefit for the price.
I would focus on comparing all the silver plans.
My understanding is that in non-medicare expansion states, subsidies start at 100% fpl (below that and you have to get on Medicaid) all the way up to 400% of fpl reducing to nothing but the time you hit 400%.
In Medicare expansion states, subsidies start at 134% of fpl.
I've been with all of the major carriers in the state. Cost differences are minimal and any coverage differences are impossible to compare. Health insurance in the US has become exactly like auto insurance - you pay cash out of pocket and just pretend you don't have insurance until something really bad happens.
EDIT: Guess you guys didn't want to move after all. We'll still welcome you if you change your mind.
Brazil: any foreigner looking to work in Brazil must have a work visa or Brazilian residency. In most cases, you should have a job secured before planning to move. The employing company must submit a work permit application to its local Ministry of Labor & Employment – this is the first step to meet the requirements in the work visa application process. After the application is approved, the approval is published in one of the local legal newspapers and sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After this, the Ministry will contact the Consulate or Embassy, which will then start the visa process.
No. Even South American countries don't have any open-door policies.
You will do about as much if not more paperwork when trying to rent a place, sign-up for electricity, Internet connection, a smartphone contract, and so on.
So it does seem to me that TurkishPoptart is fairly free to leave if his/her worry is just complying with the law as mentioned in the posted comment.
Your age, etc. may cause this to be different, but I think there's a good chance you can improve on $1900/month.