How 'bout around a hundred sixty bucks a month for someone age 40 to 49... available from several providers? The real advantage, though, is the "discount" aspect of being insured. Those who can produce a card pay the group insurance company's approved reimbursement rate starting from dollar one. So, long before you hit the deductable you have savings that are often of in excess of fifty percent of the "rack rate". So I guess you can sort of think of them as a discount card with stop loss provisions.
The good rates are only available to the healthy though, so waiting to qualify until you're older and less healthy is unwise.
Nope, I got a quote of seventy bucks a month from a provider a few years ago, I actually paid a few months premium before realizing that I was dishing out over 800 a year for practically nothing. The coverage was so poor, about the only people who could get a dime back on it were those who padded their expenses up with chiropractors, massage therapy, naturopaths, etc.
The thing is, I don't believe in quack medicine, and I don't waste money on someone to hold my hand. WA state requires insurers to cover all this pablum, so the potential expense for them is reflected in our health insurance rates. I suppose if someone made a frightfully high deductable, say $5,000, that might make premiums dirt cheap (all they're taking a chance on here is an accident or a heart attack), and I'd think about paying 35-40 dollars for a piece of paper that made my HSA contributions tax deductable.
By the way, I saw on NBC news tonight, here in WA, there is a network of providers who do a cash-only business, no insurance hassles, no paperwork, no billing, just cash and carry. Fifty bucks an appointment is what it costs, sounds like a plan to me. They showed a couple who started getting racked for $700 a month in insurance premiums, who went to catastrophic coverage only, and pay out of their own pocket for the little stuff. Of course, there was some insurance whore pooh-poohing the whole concept.