There are now over 50 million Americans without health insurance. Most people that have insurance are lucky enough to get health insurance from their employers but those without health insurance from work are left high and dry. Some people are waiting for Congress to pass some sort of health care reform to make coverage more affordable, but the truth is that you can’t afford not to have health care insurance—otherwise you could find yourself with a pile of medical bills and heading straight toward bankruptcy.

If you find yourself without health insurance you should take the time to sit down with an independent insurance agent to help you shop for cheap health insurance and find a policy that works for you and your family. They can take your information and run it against dozens of different proprietary quoting systems and find you the best deal.

Another option is to consider a health savings account and a high-deductible health plan. The high-deductible health plan will take care of all of your costs above a certain deductible. Essentially, they take care of major problems and you are left to take care of the smaller day to day issues. These plans are great for people who are healthy and allow people to save money tax-free.

An unusual place that some self-employed people have found to get group coverage is through Sam’s club and Costco. Both of these companies have group health plans that its members that are a lot more affordable than many options on the open market.

Some states also have state health insurance plans that you may be able to sign-up for. These will also likely be more affordable than private health insurance. You can check with your state’s health board to see if your state has any options.

If you absolutely can’t afford health insurance, there is public health insurance that you can at least get for your children. The children’s health insurance program (SCHIP) provides coverage to many children whose parents cannot afford health insurance for them.

Get health insurance if there’s any way that you can make it happen. If you find yourself with major medical costs and don’t have health insurance to pay for it, fortunately most medical institutions have a lot of mercy to customers that can’t afford to pay their bills. Quite often you can offer them a portion of your bill and they will take it as a settlement in full.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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