[TheForge] Insurance

[Guadalupe Forge, Inc.]

Jim,
We had our health insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield years ago, but
had to leave them due to steadily increasing premiums. We switched to Golden
Rule, but had to leave them last year, for the same reason. After years of
fighting this problem, our conclusion is that the only way to keep your
health insurance costs from being horribly high is to 1) try to go with the
highest deductible you can justify and 2)periodically change companies, if
you are healthy enough to do so. Unfortunately, in the health insurance
industry, the reward for staying for years as a loyal customer appears to be
ridiculously high premiums.

We shopped insurance companies by talking to friends and using some of the
insurance web sites on the internet. If you do a search for "health
insurance" you'll find a list of sites that will give you comparative prices
after your wife enters basic info. Some of these sites do offer contacts to
larger, well known companies, which is what we felt best about. We switched
my husband's insurance to Mutual of Omaha after contacting them through one
of these sites. I had developed a chronic health problem that made me
basically uninsurable, so when I left Golden Rule, my only option was to
switch to a "high risk" insurance pool that Texas administers for those who
can't get health insurance elsewhere. (Your state may have such an insurance
program too, and if you would like any help looking into that, feel free to
contact us.) Both of our companies have increased our premiums since we
joined them (they always do) but even so, we are still paying less than we
would be if we had stayed with the previous company. So it's sort of a
running battle.

We are in our forties and fifties, and are paying quite a bit less than your
wife's current premiums. Changing companies is a hassle, but I would think
she could find a better rate with a major company if she does some shopping
around. Let us know if we can be of any further help, and best of luck to
you.
Sheri and Rick Ross
Guadalupe Forge
Ingram, Texas


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