Health Insurance for RPT's?

[Mark Schecter]

David Ilvedson wrote:
> I've got to wonder if banding together is going to do anything...I have 
Kaiser and that is one heck of a lot of people banding together in a
non-profit medical program....it still costs my family of three $803
a month for coverage...
> 

Hi, Dave.

If you signed up with Kaiser as an individual purchaser, you're probably
paying a higher rate than you would pay as an employee where the
employer was buying coverage for a bunch of employees. The NASE
(National Association for the Self-Employed) says (in an article linked
below), "An employee in a firm with less than 10 employees pays 18% more
for health insurance than a worker in a firm with 200 or more employees
..."

Also, as a self-employed individual, you are not presently allowed to
deduct the cost of health insurance premiums from the amount of income
on which you pay self-employment tax. Self-employment is the _only_ form
of business in which this is the case. There are people working on
correcting this situation, but as of now, that's how it is, as you are
probably aware. So you're paying the 15.3% self-employment tax on your
premiums, on top of paying higher rates in the first place. Does that
seem fair? Not to me ...

This article is a good place to start, and it has links to some others also:
http://advocacy.nase.org/issue_briefs/AssociationHealthCare.asp

I really want to see this situation change.

-Mark Schecter