[ale] cheap health insurance

[Jerald Sheets]

The thing that *is* handy about it, though, is that it now qualifies as
"continued coverage" for the purposes of covering pre-existing conditions.
So, if you need to take a contract for awhile and you don't generally get
sick, but a family member has one of these pre-existing conditions, you can
get coverage through that period, and your next employer can't kick you out
because of it.

I was with Tek when they moved from one to the other back in '04.


---
Jerald M. Sheets jr.


On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 8:21 AM, Jeff Lightner <jlightner at water.com> wrote:

>   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&pagewanted=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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