Evaluating options when becoming self-employed

If you're leaving your job to become self-employed, don't continue your COBRA option for the entire 18 months before you apply for individual cover- age. A lot of people make this mistake. The problem with this strategy is that it risks future insurability. Your health may go bad, and when the 18 months are over, you'll be stuck with less-than-desirable choices.
A three-point plan reduces the risk of coming up short on COBRA: Continue your group coverage under COBRA, if you are eligible, when you leave your job, to have uninterrupted coverage.
Stay with COBRA while you test the self-employment waters. If you don't like self-employment, just continue COBRA until you're back working for another company and are covered by its group plan.

The moment you decide to stay self-employed, apply for a good individ- ual health plan, but keep COBRA while your application is being evalu- ated. If you're approved, drop COBRA. If you're declined, keep COBRA until you've located replacement insurance through HIPAA.

Evaluating school accident insurance

Most elementary and secondary schools send information home with stu- dents about insurance for injuries that occur on school grounds or at school events. This insurance is most commonly offered to student-athletes.

Do this:
Assuming that you don't have to worry about any exclusions and that the insurance is reasonably priced, buy it if you have a high deductible on your health insurance plan.
If you have minimal deductibles or copayments, don't buy it. It just duplicates coverage you already have.

Evaluating dread disease insurance

We all have fears of some kind. We universally fear cancer. Those of us close to other serious diseases probably fear those as well. Some parts of the insur- ance industry have responded to our fears with policies that cover only those things we fear. We're totally against what we call Las Vegas insurance - policies that pay only on the first Tuesday after a full moon, like travel acci- dent insurance, travel life insurance, accidental death insurance, rush-hour auto liability insurance, and so on. Most of the time, these either are wasteful policies because they duplicate other coverage or, if you're really tempted to buy them, are a warning to you that you may be underinsured in certain areas. Buying travel life insurance, for example, sends a red flag that you feel your current life insurance is inadequate. Skip the travel insurance and use the money you save toward increasing your life insurance coverage.