Ask HN: Health insurance options for founders while bootstrapping

What fails about the information that is provided by http://www.coveredca.com/

Head to the CA healthcare marketplace site, go through the enrollment form. List your income as what it is ($0?) right now. It will tell you what you qualify for. In NY, I got a better plan than when I was employed and it's free, with no copays or deductibles either.

Everything goes through the healthcare exchanges now. Just go through that process.

If you're both young and healthy, don't have spouses and/or children, I would recommend just getting a catastrophic plan for now.

Go to CA Marketplace and get the highest-deductible plan you can find (it will be the cheapest plan as well). You'll be paying out-of-pocket for your doctor visits, but that's what you want to be doing: the plans that meaningfully offset routine medical costs cost more than you'd pay just doing it out of pocket.

If you're both male and you have no prior health history of any sort, you can also go direct to Kaiser, Anthem, Blue Cross, &c and buy private insurance. There will be a medical questionnaire to fill out, and it'll take a little while to be approved, but it will ultimately be cheaper than the marketplace plan.

However you do it, do it carefully and follow up with your provider to make sure you're enrolled properly. Ours screwed up a bunch of stuff (both enrollment and billing) and we have some horror stories about the results.

> We looked at Covered California and heard we might also qualify for medicare.

Unless you are a senior, you probably don't qualify for Medicare. You may qualify for Medi-Cal (California's Medicaid plan), which is a very different thing.

Covered California should identify any eligibility for either Medi-Cal or Covered CA exchange-plan subsidies.