Please Don’t Fling Me In The Briar Patch
Chapter 9 - The idea of shopping for an HSA certainly seems like a pretty daunting task to me. Where do you start? Ask a neighbor or friend? Do some online research? Call the guy or lady that writes your auto policy and see if they are experts on health insurance too? Yellow pages? Your HR benefits department at work? A call-in show on the radio? Maybe a
fortune teller?
With the probable exception of a fortune teller (unless they’re also a neighbor or personal friend), all the other ideas above probably have some value. Truth is, this whole thing on the surface seems like a real tar baby. That being said, if you know the story of the tar baby, there is a pretty good chance that you won’t get hanged, skinned, boiled, or drowned in the process. You might get flung into the briar patch but in the end you may get the last laugh when you figure out that’s where you should have been all along.
Several months ago, when I was beginning to hear about HSAs a friend hooked me up with his insurance agent. I gave her some family information and she worked up some preliminary quotes for us. They looked pretty good, but I was still held firmly by the fangs of my COBRA policy. But it did give me an idea of what was in front of me.
A couple of weeks back, my friend, who already has an HDHP with an HSA went online to his insurance agent’s website and lowered his monthly premium for his family of 4 from $347 per month to $253 per month. What’s more, from the time he submitted his profile information to the time he had preliminary approval was all of about 20 minutes, maybe less. Part of that savings he got because he raised his deductible to $10,000 but I believe another part of it is that insurance companies are getting better at understanding the risk around underwriting this kind of insurance and the market for it is becoming more competitive. A shining example of the free market at work.
As for me, I think that’s the direction I too will follow. Go to that site. Fill in some forms, press submit and see what kind of plan makes the most sense based on my submission. Maybe it won’t be so daunting after all.
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