Practice Management

I have said it before, health insurance (and insurance in general) is the bane of my existence as a home office practitioner.  I have crappy health insurance coverage from a crappy insurance company that charges a ton of money every month so they can elect not to provide me or my family any real services for the money.  That is good for the insurance company, and it is bad for me, both from a financial standpoint and a health standpoint.   I pay a huge sum of hard earned money for the benefit of carrying a plastic card in my wallet that says I have insurance.  As far as I can see, my money is spent on not much more than a status symbol.  That plastic card says I am not one of the uninsured, but what does that really mean.  It is like having a AMEX Platinum Card to show people, but you do not really have the ability to charge anything on it.  That is the only benefit I see.  It is out of control.  It is not that I have not shopped around and tried to find something better.  I have.  I just cannot find anything better that somebody less than Bill Gates can afford. 

I wish there was some organization for solos and small firms that at least provided some type of decent comprehensive health insurance coverage in my state.

This said, before this turns you off on moving your practice home or in going out on your own, let me just say it is not much better out in the rest of the business world.  The Austin Business Journal reports that in a new survey by SurePayroll that 56% of all small business do not offer a health insurance plan.  I am sure that is probably true for many law firms as well.

Worse still the number of small businesses offering health insurance dropped by 32% since last year.

Many lawyers try to get their spouse to work from governmental agency or large company just for the insurance.  I have known lawyers who have left the private practice of law (and sometimes the practice of law altogether) so as to find employment with a group insurance plan in which the company pays at least part of the insurance premium.  The point of all of this is that these alternatives are becoming fewer and farther between as businesses rush to cut insurance coverage.

So the dark underbelly of the private practice of law is either the lack of health insurance or, in my case, the lack of decent and good quality insurance coverage.  We do not talk about it enough.  Worse, we as a group are not doing anything about it, and we should be.  It is not just the bane of my existence, but it is the bane of the existence for most of us.

Does anybody have any ideas?  If so email me or comment to this post and share them with us.