Anyone heard of NASE (National Assoc for the Self-Employed)?
 

A salesman dropped by recently and has given me a quote on health insurance. What does anyone know about this group?

A few years back I joined them. Got a pretty good deal on group insurance. Was better than getting it myself.

Good! I'm tired of being self-insured.

We had a sales person come by the house and drop off the literature and quote us a price.

On the surface, it seemed like a good deal, especially since we have no health insurance at the moment.

Upon further review, there were many bells and whistles...but, the substance was lacking.

For instance, even though they are not an HMO, you really don't get anything paid for doctor office visits. You can choose any doctor you want, which is nice.

If you do want a discount, you have to use their preferred list, in which case, you'll receive a certain percentage off the bill, after you pay the doctor in full.

They quoted us a price of over 400. per month, which isn't bad at all.

But, the hospitalisation coverage had a thousand dollar deductible and only paid ..damn, I can't remember what it paid...but, certainly far less than what a hospital room cost.

I am going to look into Blue Cross/ Blue Shield. Marsha, from XBiz, said she got coverage for less than 200. a month, which included prescriptions, etc.

Yeah, the coverage with them wasn't the best but it was better than nothing at the time. Blue Cross/Blue Shield is what I have had for the last year and it is hard to beat. I have 2 kids so I love the $15 Dr. visits.

I almost signed with them then I heard 2 horror stories from people who had serious emergencies and weren't covered.

Here's 1 of the stories:
Checked my mail yesterday; got two bills ... one from the surgical group / one from hospital that did my gall bladder surgery. To make a long story short ... I now owe nearly $200K in medical bills and one of the bills says I have to ...
PAY NOW: $31,264

insured through this organization ... http://nase.org

Heres another one from peaches

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...highlight=nase

Run from this group! At least where I live, they have the WORST insurance imaginable. My father had it for years, never made a claim. Finally did, and it covered about $55 out of a $9K bill. If you have BCBS available in your area, I highly recommend it.

I pay almost $300 a month for health insurance, but it's a tax deduction so that's cool.

you should all move to Canada

No no no no no. NASE sucks.

NASE wont give insurance to anybody over about 13. When we applied they wanted a 15 year medical history, blood sample, sperm sample, shit sample,etc, and they wrote the policy in a way I could never collect a dime. I cancelled the piece of shit.

Got good old blue cross now, $1,150 a month!

I am a member. Have been for about 4 years. I only use their major medical and emergency insurance. We don't have enough normal medical bills to warrant full coverage.

:eek7 You're kidding right? That would be one of the reasons I would NOT move to Canada...I've heard some horror stories about their health system. I prefer the good ole USA :) I pay under $150/month for medical, dental, vision and prescription and am extremely happy with the coverage.

When I applied to get coverage with them all I did was fill out some paperwork. Didn't have to do any tests or physicals. We mainly used the insurance to get prescriptions cheaper and once or twice when my kid would get into some mishap and need stitches (which seems to happen alot).

There is this group, it was discussed a couple times on here before.. it's like the "bay area media association" or something like that.. it's like a media group of sorts.

It costs like $80 a year & you can get insurance through the group rate -- which are slightly more than it would cost you on your own, BUT, for those of you who are unisureable due to previous medical history - you avoid medical underwriting by joining the group :)

You need to make a proveable minimum of $5000/year in the "media" industry (webmasterin' qualifies last I checked)

I'll dig up the url...

Got it..

http://www.media-alliance.org


The great part about it was that you can choose your health care provider from 3 or 4 of the big guys. Like Kaiser, Bluecross/shield, Healthnet HMO/PPO (S'okay)... and some dental vision plans.

Anyway I don't think they are quoting group rates as much as they are allowing you to bypass the medical underwriting.

The rates they quoted me were ~10-20% above healthy-person retail.

I'd like to have something just for the major medical emergencies.

About how much would that cost per person PK, if you don't mind my asking.

I like to play hard, and sometimes I do terrible things to my body. ;)

Socialised medicine works!

nope

A friend of mine that lives in BC told me that if they need a major surgery that they can come down into Washington state and have it done here and that their government will pick up the tab.

What doesn't work about that?

He said that the myth about socialized health care not working is probably created by those in the USA who stand to loose billions if the health care system were to leave the private sector.


I don't know if that's true, but I do know that the USA is one the only advanced nations in the world who provides no health care for it's citizens.

I also know that pharmaceutical companies use tax payers money (in the form of grants) to do research for drug development, and then turn around and charge US citizens more for the exact same drugs than any other country in the world.

If you don't believe me, call up pharmacies in different countries and do a price comparison. :winkwink:

Well for two teenagers and myself it's $200 a month. Not sure what it is for just one adult. It's been eons since I looked. The other nice thing is you get a price cut on prescriptions.

I have insurance through NASE. I've never used it for an office visit or anything and I don't remember deductibles/coverage off the top of my head, but I've had health insurance and had to have surgery before when I was with a company that had "good" coverage and I did a comparison...things seemed pretty comparable. Deductibles were a teeny bit high but for myself it's only $120 a month. I got the best plan they had.

I used it once for a prescription and didn't seem to save that much money but that was only once...I can't judge yet.

I pay $270 a month for Kaiser...

Gotta be something cheaper and as good!