Not on how healthy you are, and not on what might happen. On the ordinary, repeating costs you already know about. Here are five households, and what we would actually tell each of them — including the one we would turn away.
Nothing complicated. A maintenance medication or two collected every month, an eye test annually, and new lenses when the prescription moves.
This is the most common household we speak to, and the one where the arithmetic is easiest to check: you already know what the pharmacy charges you.
$19.95 a month, and it covers exactly the three things this household uses.
A crown that has been put off, or a course of treatment somebody has been quoted for and is quietly dreading.
Dental is the single category most likely to justify a plan on its own, because the retail prices are high and the discount applies to each visit.
Dental is Platinum only. It is not on Gold, Silver or Bronze at any price, and it is worth being blunt about that.
Diabetes, a heart condition, anything that means regular blood work, repeat prescriptions and consumables that never stop.
The value here is not one big saving. It is a small saving on something you buy every month for the rest of your life.
Diabetic supplies start at Gold. If lab work is the bigger cost, Silver may be enough.
You are managing somebody else’s appointments, prescriptions and equipment on top of your own life, and half the difficulty is administrative rather than medical.
This is the household where the service categories matter more than the percentages.
Because the two categories that help most here — advocacy and 24/7 telehealth — are Platinum only.
You are in good health, you take nothing regularly, your eyes are fine and you saw a dentist last year with nothing found. You are here because somebody mentioned it.
A membership costs money every month whether or not you use it. If there is nothing in the seventeen categories you are currently buying, it will not pay for itself, and pretending otherwise would be the easiest way for us to lose you in three months.
Come back when something changes — a prescription, a diagnosis, dental work quoted.
The networks are national. It works where you live and where you happen to be, not only at a home provider.
There is no annual maximum and no point at which the card stops working because you have used it too much.
No underwriting, no medical history, no waiting period. Existing conditions change nothing about what you pay or what you can use.
There is no enrollment season either. You can join in any month and the card works from the day it arrives.
This is the question we get asked most, and the honest answer has two halves.
Tell us what you actually spend on and which state you are in, and you will get the same treatment the five above did — including being told no, if that is the answer.
See which plan fits what you use
About five minutes. Nothing to fill in.
