How Much Health Insurance Should a Self-employed Person Purchase?

When you are self-employed, the cost of health insurance is totally on your shoulders. How much health insurance should you have? That would depend upon your personal and family needs. All too much, self-employed people have little or no health coverage. If you don’t have medical insurance the medical bills will pile up. If you are unable to pay those bills your creditors can file a credit report on you, which could be damaging to your buying power as a businessperson.

Before purchasing a health plan for the self-employed, you would need to make a list of what your needs are. If you have a family, you would need to enter all the health care services that your spouse and children would have need of. Or you any independent contractor or do you hire people in order to run your business? Do you want to offer group coverage to your employees? Depending on the size of your business, and your own specific needs, you could choose a personal or family plan, or you could buy into a group health insurance for the self-employed.

The recession in the United States has put a damper on everyone’s spending power. Almost everyone is cutting back in one way or another. People are driving their cars less, and combining several errands into one to save fuel. It’s good to cut back and conserve on gasoline, and other natural resources, but it is not a good thing to cut back on medical insurance coverage.

Business owners who have 2 to 50 employees working for them can offer group insurance to their employees. More and more business owners are dropping group coverage, which leaves the employees without access to health care. Employers may not be required to offer medical coverage, and because of the expense involved many employers don’t offer insurance. Those employers that do offer group coverageto their employees can claim a deduction for every employee, which helps to lessen the employer’s total cost for health coverage.

There are over 25 million people in the United States that don’t have enough medical insurance.

How does the small business owner know when they don’t have enough medical coverage for the self-employed?

If you are underinsured you will have more out of pocket expense than you can afford to pay. The underinsured often have less coverage, and more health care expenses—their monthly premiums not withstanding.

In summary, make sure you, as a business owner; you have enough coverage to cover all of your health care needs. Take stock of what you and your family’s needs are, and then go online to get a self-employed quote. After getting a quote, compare other insurance companies for price and coverage, and go from there to a local agent to help you streamline your self-employed insurance plan.