The Gamer's Quarter

[aderack]

How does this work, exactly?
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[Scratchmonkey]

There's a couple of options. One is getting third-party insurance:

http://www.bluecrossca.com/

It costs money per month; however, it's pretty reasonable. My co-worker who just moved from wage to salary is actually staying with Blue Cross rather than moving to the company's insurance because he would take a rate hike to do so.

There's also walk-in clinics, the one that I'm most familiar with is the Berkeley Free Clinic, they mainly concentrate on pretty basic care -- for example, on Thursdays they only deal with TB issues. Just a quick Google search in Oakland turns up this place:

http://www.lifelongmedical.org/

Which claims that they deal with a lot of insuranceless people, although they don't say how payment is worked out.

[aderack]

Oh, Blue Cross has both medical and dental. There definitely are some reasonable rates here. Fifteen bucks a month for dental? The high-class plan is 44? And medical only goes up to 264, with a low of 61. Yeah... I guess I can do this all right.

The "out-of-pocket maximum"... the phrasing there is confusing me. Presumably that's the most the insurance will cover on a yearly basis. What's the "out-of-pocket" bit mean?

For dental, "participating" presumably refers to the dentist? Are there any dentists that don't take Blue Cross? That seems awfully odd.

Also, there are five billion dentists within a few miles of me. Is there any particularly good method for choosing one?
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[Harveyjames]

I dreamt all my top teeth fell apart and it ruined my winning smile. It was horrible!

[Shapermc]

I will do everything I can to make sure I have medical/dental coverage for the rest of my life. I got into a situation where I had no insurance and was taken to a hospital that thought I did. They treated me and I owed them so much money it's kind of disgusting. I was paying off about 2 hours of being in a hospital for about two years. The sick thing is that the payment for the hospital was more than medical insurance would have cost per month.

Basically, don't go to a hospital if you don't have insurance.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[aderack]

If you don't have a reasonable way to pay medical bills, isn't there a way to, well, brush them off? Apparently my mother keeps doing this somehow. Obviously it's not an ideal situation, but.

Man, I'm surprised by how cheap Blue Cross is. Seventy-six bucks a month for good-enough medical and dental is... well, I'm living on practically nothing here, and I can manage that. I kept getting the impression that health insurance costs hundreds of dollars.

The only thing keeping me from signing up is not knowing a thing about choosing dentists.
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[Shapermc]

Honestly, for dentist, just go to a few that are most convenient, look at their office (go in and say "I'm thinking about using this dentist and just wanted a look around") and then make a choice based on what you feel most comfortable with. Most are either good or really good. Occasionally there's a poor dentist, but if you go to them you'll know on your first visit and you can just change dentists.

Anyways, medical coverage IS hundreds of dollars. You're going to be getting the most basic package here, and it's better than nothing, but you are going to probably spend a lot of time complaining about things and waiting for things and generally feeling really restricted. It's not a bad deal though, you just have to get use to it.

Also, about the dentists: if you prefer to have laughing gas as a sedative, make sure to ask when you visit what they use. Not all dentists do, and my wife won't go to any unless they use it now.

As for brushing them off: well, you can just not pay the bill, but that's going to affect your credit just like any other bill you don't pay.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[aderack]

Ah. Credit. That's interesting. I don't know much about credit, since I've never had any. What do you mean about it not being a bad deal if I can get used to it? The ambivalence in that statement is deliciously poignant!

What are the advantages to nitrous oxide over... other things? What are the alternatives? (EDIT for remembering the pain of Novocaine needles in gums... I freaked out once at my old family dentist, as it felt like the needle was going right through my cheek. I think it's Novocaine, more than anything else, that always freaked me out about the dentist.)

Incidentally, this line of thought was in part inspired by Thom's recent problems.
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[ryan]

I use http://www.ehealthinsurance.com. My father's employer recommended it for part-time employees, and so far my brother and girlfriend have signed on to plans from it. I believe both of them use a Humana base plan with a dental add-on. The rates can go really low, as long as you get your basics covered (prescriptions, if you need them, and whatnot).

Deusjester deals with insurance now and he was just telling me yesterday that you can tell them you won't pay them. If a hospital treats you in the case of an emergency, according to him, you can tell them you aren't paying and there isn't much they can do about it. I suppose some will try to take you to small claims court or send creditors after you - having seen Maxed Out, the latter option seems horrible - but a lot of time not paying means putting up with some annoying phone calls and that's about it.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[aderack]

Yeah. Good to know for emergencies, though it's certainly a last resort!

This comparison service is pretty good. So this business with the deductible -- what's that all about? Can someone explain it?
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[Fred]

There's been a lot of talk on med student forums from kids doing ER residencies dealing with the treat-and-vanish... basically, people who don't have insurance but do have a minor injury needing treatment--sutures for a bad cut or a broken limb that needs setting or something--will show up without insurance or identification, fill out the patient information form with false information, receive treatment and then split. I don't recommend that. It's fraud and you can and will be prosecuted if you screw it up. But, it is an option some of my young and broke-ass friends have employed successfully.

Anyway, to the other question, Wikipedia has a useful glossary of terms.

[aderack]

Yow. So if there's a 3,500 deductible, you have to pay three and a half thousand bucks before the insurance kicks in? That's insane.

Or, for only $29.00 more per month, you can go without a deductible at all...

Man, that's deliberate, isn't it. Even the figure. Twenty-nine instead of thirty.

Regarding "Out-of-pocket maximums" -- so how this works is that, after a certain figure the insurance stops paying and you have to pay on your own, but then after a certain point the insurance kicks back in again and you'll never have to pay more than that set amount? Am I understanding this correctly? If so, that's kind of convoluted.
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[dhex]

hospitals will treat anyone who comes in requiring emergency care. even very hoity toity private hospitals make up the bulk of their patient load from low income, indigent and emergency care.

[simplicio]

Just be warned- Blue Cross seems to have a worse reputation than many for not paying up, so know that you may need to do a bunch of additional footwork when the time comes.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[dhex]

someone kicked this my way about credit report freezes (which i had to do earlier this year when someone tried to open an account at dell; thankfully the fuckface couldn't spell and my credit card company knows dell is not my style, both creepy and useful as a service extra.)

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/11/now-a-way-to-st.html

sorry to hijack this into a credit and how it gets that way thread.
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[Ashura]

If you are a student of any type you can walk into a Bank of America and get a credit card with a big limit no questions asked. When I say any type, you could go up to the college and take a class on a whim and it would be okay.

I recently started with zero credit, and I had to take some shitty beginner's card where I paid them like a security deposit and a small annual fee so I could get a $500 limit credit card. Essentially I just paid for anything up right after I bought anything with it. They just recently sent me a 'CONGRATULATIONS. YOU DIDN'T FUCK UP, NO MORE RESTRICTIONS.' or somesuch.

I, too, am interested in insurance. More on that in a bit.

[aderack]

Showing my absolute ignorance on these things: if you don't use a credit card at all, do you still have to pay any fees? Are there any tangible penalties (aside from the weird and ephemeral personal "credit rating" business that doesn't strike me as real enough to think about right now)? Like, credit limits dropping or rates rising or getting angry letters from gnomes?
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[dhex]

[ryan]

I believe you're asking if you need to pay any fees in general to use a credit card, right? As long as you don't have a running balance, no, you don't pay anything. If you get a card today and don't use it, you will owe nothing. You will still get statements in the mail, but they will just have the amount due as $0. Your credit history doesn't mean much to credit card companies - you can get a card regardless - but it does matter for bigger purchases, like houses and cars. My deceased relatives get card offers all the time, being super selectively chosen after a long process, one of the few to get this offer, getting the offer because they deserve it, etc.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[dhex]

ahh ok that makes sense.

yeah no so long as you don't use it they can't ding you for nothing. miss a payment and blammo, of course.
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[Ashura]

Essentially, if you're getting 'sign up for a credit card now, easy!' things in the mail, you shouldn't have a problem getting a card.

I had no credit, and everyone of those things turned me down hard and fast. I have a cell phone and have paid it on time every month, and on and on, and it didn't build me any credit. Even BOA, who I have been a customer with for about 5 years wouldn't give me jack.

I went in to talk with them, and they said all they could offer me was that beginners/people with messed up credit card. It had like a down payment and like I think a fee every year, though after one year of good credit it was waived and now EVERY credit card company wants to give me a card.

All I did was essentially buy something with it, and before the statement even came, went online and transferred funds into it right away. Simple as that.