Cost of "affordable healthcare" in the United States
So I was in the middle of another bog post about what influenced our decision to move abroad for a season, with our 3 children (ages 3, 6 and 9). Affordable health care ranked in the top three for each of us. I quoted a number off the cuff about what I thought it would cost to insure our family of 5 in the United States. My guess was $2,000. I also prepare United States personal income tax returns for a living, so with the new W2 reporting requirement, I am pretty aware of what health care costs are for companies offering it to their employees, but I hadn't shopped for insurance on the individual market for quite some time. The experiment was eye opening to say the least. First of all, in my home state of Oregon, where we lived for the summer with no health insurance, it appears that we would not have even been able to purchase a "major medical plan" since we had no "qualifying reason" to be able to enroll during a non-open enrollment period. ...