[ale] cheap health insurance

[Jeff Lightner]

Bad example.  

I worked for TEKsystems and they had god awful insurance at the time.
The policy essentially was capped at $5000 a year and that only for
hospital stays.   It was not a real HMO/PPO/Major Medical plan.   They
even told me it wasn't classified as health insurance the way other
plans were.   From what I gathered in complaining about it their view
was that their folks were contractors who didn't really want the
insurance.

 

I liked the people I worked with at TEKSystems and the ones that give
the talks at AUUG on occasion know their stuff but their insurance is a
joke.  Luckily for me I was able to maintain the insurance from my prior
job during my sojourn with them (albeit at a fairly high cost).   It was
this insurance that made me think of the job as "temporary" from the day
I took it even though I liked the company they'd placed me with and the
work I was doing there.   I'd likely not have taken it at all if it
hadn't been during the tech bust period in the earlier part of this
decade.

 

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Dave
Malhotra
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 6:42 PM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: [ale] cheap health insurance

 

This article came out last week. Its the sad story of a computer
security contractor who suffered a catastrophic health problem that
ended up bankrupting him and his wife. He paid for health insurance from
the staffing company he worked through (TEKsystems), but it didn't
provide the nearly the coverage he had assumed. Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/business/01meddebt.html
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/business/01meddebt.html?_r=1&pagewant
ed=print> 

here's an older critique (a bit left-biased but has some good points) of
these somewhat controversial health plans:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/05/limited_benefits.html

With the economy the way it is more people might find themselves working
through staffing companies that offer this type of cheap health coverage
as an incentive. I just wanted to make people aware of this who are used
to the comprehensive plans offered by most direct employers. The cheap
limited benefits insurance offered by staffing companies is not the same
and leaves you financially exposed to a major illness.

-dave
 
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