A couple weeks ago I discussed the gray area involving pre-existing conditions (PEC) and health insurance companies. In the comments, I made an allusion to a health care company that I signed up for that sheds some light on the issue.

Assurant Health specializes in offering short-term health insurance options to people that want individual or family policies apart from employer-financed health care. The terms they attach to their policies actually put their coverage between “insufficient” and “utterly useless.”

Assurant specializes in offering “insurance” on the cheap. Their plans are generally high-deductible and even after you meet your deductible you’re still on the hook for 20%. They may offer a permanent plan, but the policies I’m looking at are their “short-term” policies. Those are the policies that are half-useless. But they do fill a market void.

The way it works is this: You sign up for a plan and it can last for up to six months. The last time I used them, they cost $75 a month despite my smoking. The deductible was $2500 and, as mentioned, you were still on the hook for 20% once you passed your deductible. I’m not sure how much they charge now, though their web site says plans start at $60.

The catch is, though, is that after six months you cannot renew. You have to apply again. Therefore, any illness you got in the previous six months becomes a PEC. And if in the interim you get cancer, there is a good chance that they will refuse to cover you altogether. Which may be just as well because they won’t cover PECs in the first year** on their permanent plans (which cost twice as much) and you can’t get a policy for more than six months.

So why would anyone sign up for this plan? Well, if you get a sudden-but-temporary illness, they’ve got you covered until the policy expires. If you have an accident, you’re covered there, too.

But the reason that I signed on was solely to avoid the gaps in coverage I talked about in my previous post. In essence, I was paying them just so that I would be able to tell future insurance companies that I was insured. Which is kind of screwy, when you think about it.

I’m honestly a little surprised that the insurance companies let us get away with this. You would think that they’d lobby congress to only certify plans that meet specific criteria to count. It’s very likely that, if there were a PEC requirement, we will start to see more such lobbying. Not all of Assurant’s plans are allowed in all states and Assurant does not serve a handful of states. With the exception of some western states, the states with limited services are Blue States. So I suspect it’s a question of how tightly states are regulated rather than state legislatures being overly deferential to Big Insurance (not that these things are mutually exclusive).

Nonetheless, it’s a handy thing to have around for people that can’t afford better coverage. Clancy and I may have to re-evaluate our insurance options soon (her COBRA plan is wicked-expensive and not reimbursed by ARRA). We’re in a good enough financial position that we don’t have to accept this sort of half-coverage, fortunately.

** – You have to have a gap in coverage for PECs not to be covered under group (ie employer) plans. The same is not true for individual policies.

You may have noticed that my posts lately have not necessarily been as involved and discussion-inducing as previous commentary. This isn’t really an accident. Since I’m visiting family, my time for commenting is limited, so those subjects that are most likely to provoke involved discussion have been sort of put on the backburner. Regular posting will likely return when I get back to Cascadia.

UPDATE: Added entries for FiberOne 80 Honey Squares and FiberPlus Cinnamon Oat Crunch. There’s one other brand I’ve tried. I’ll see if I can track it down to add it.

As most of you know, I have become an evangelist of high-fiber cereal. I believe that this cereal has had an enormous effect on my weight loss (30 pounds in six months and nearly 15 in the ten months since). But all fiber breakfast cereal is not created equal. So below is a list of your options in the order in which I prefer them. They’re not organized by taste as the best tasting option (FiberOne Caramel Delights) is below the worst tasting one (Rat Turds). It’s a combination of health content versus taste. If you don’t like one, try others.

FiberOne Honey Clusters – This has become a staple of my diet. It has just a little bit of sugar (6g per serving), but it’s enough that you don’t have to add sweetener for it to be edible. I often do anyway, though. The texture is flakes. There are 13g of fiber per serving, which amounts to 51% of your daily alotment. I typically eat 2-3 servings per meal, so that comes to well over 100% of my daily alotment of fiber and about 15g or so of sugar. Not ideal, but really not bad. If you’re on a low-carb diet or if you have serious blood-sugar spikes, though, it may have too many carbs for you. Clancy found herself falling back to sleep after eating them, though nothing like that ever happened to me. To me, the Honey Clusters are the best balance of fibery health and minimal sugar. {Score: 46, Taste: 8, Health: 7, Consistency: 8}

FiberOne Honey Squares – It bills itself as being 80 calories and only lists 3 grams of sugar, but that’s largely attributable to (a) smaller serving sizes and (b) lighter texture. The serving is 30g instead of 50g or so, and 3/4 a cup rather than a full cup. Bring those numbers in line and it’s health content is nearly identical to the Honey Clusters. However, the light texture actually means that you are likely to eat less. Taste-wise, these are competitive with the Honey Squares. There is a little bit of a weird aftertaste with these. I’m not sure what that’s all about. Perhaps due in part to the novelty of this new selection, but I find myself gravitating towards these and away from the Honey Clusters. Both are really good, though. The Honey Squares are lower in fiber (10g/40%), but that becomes less of an issue when you account for serving sizes.

Kashi GoLean Original – This may well be the all-around healthiest cereal, though my scoring system places more emphasis on fiber and sugar rather than protein. It has about the same sugar content as F1 Honey Clusters and a little less fiber (10g/srvg), but it also packs in 13g of protein whereas the protein content of Fiber One cereal is minimal. GoLean also tastes the best without sweetener of any of these options. It also has more a variety of shapes and texture than the others. However, it does get soggy quicker than the rest. I personally find that the missing fiber content makes a difference, so it’s not my first choice. Another plus of GoLean is that it is that you don’t even need milk to eat it. On our road trips, I try to make sure to bring GoLean simply because it makes for good, high-fiber snack food. {Score: 46, Taste: 8, Health: 8, Consistency: 6}

FinerOne Caramel Delight – It’s a fibery knock-off of Cinnamon Toast Cruch. Or at least that’s what it tastes like to me. Bar none, this is the tastiest cereal of the group. Like GoLean, it can be eaten independently of milk. Unfortunately, it tasted a little too good and I found that I had difficulty stopping eating it the same way that I have problem with Kids’ breakfast cereal. So it was on the basis of it tasting too good that I had to stop eating it. It has a higher sugar content than the others, as well, with 10g per serving. The missing fiber (9g/35% per serving) also made it overall less satisfying for my digestive system than most of the other options. But seriously, if I had to choose between this stuff and the really sugary breakfast cereal, I’d take this stuff. If you have kids that need a little sweetness, I recommend trying this on them. {Score: 37, Taste: 10, Health: 3, Consistency: 8}

Kellogg’s FiberPlus Cinnamon Oat Crunch – A solid replacement for the FiberOne Caramel delight, if you want some variety. They compare to cheerios in the secular cereal world. The sugar-per-serving content is pretty low (7g), though partially accounted for by defining a “serving” as 3/4 a cup instead of a full cup. On the other hand, the fiber-per-serving (9g/35%) is higher if you eat more of it. There’s a better balance of soluble and insoluble fibers here than in most of the cereals mentioned.

FiberOne Original (aka “The Rat Turds”) – This was the cereal that I tried first and I’m glad that I did. It substantially lowered my expectations of what fiber cereal should taste like. They don’t taste terrible. In fact, with enough sweetener on them, I liked them for the first couple weeks. But day in and day out, I got tired of them pretty quickly. I guess the novelty wore off. The great part of this cereal is that it has no sugar! Chances are, though, that you’re going to want to add some. But even there, you can add as much or as little as you want. What I noticed was that I started having to put more and more sweetener in it to get it to taste okay and then I started adding genuine sugar and then a little more eventually I was losing ground compared to the competitors. However one thing I found this good for was at work. Mindstorm offered free milk and free chocolate milk. Add just a little bit of chocolate milk into the milk and it actually tastes pretty good. Each serving has 14g of fiber, or 57% of your daily alotment. Two servings typically constitutes a meal, so once you eat this, you’re good on fiber for the day. Notably, one serving of this is half the size of a serving of any of the other options. So you don’t have to eat as much and that leaves more servings so you get twice as many meals out of it. Helpfully, F1 separates the content into two bags to keep it from going stale. The “Rat Turds” moniker actually comes from their appearance. They don’t taste like I would imagine actual rat turds to taste. {Score: 42, Taste: 3, Health: 10, Consistency: 8}

Kashi GoLean Crunch – There are actually two variations of this, the main difference being the inclusion of almond slices in one. What’s particularly notable about this line is that the cereal is abnormally chunky. They’re the only ones I’ve tasted that can work as finger food. They also taste good in milk, though, and require no additional sweetener. They taste a little granola-ey. They have about 13g of sugar, which isn’t great, and only 8g of fiber (32%/serving). But like the Caramel Delights, they’re more kid-friendly than the alternatives. Not quite as addictive, though. {Score: 33, Taste: 9, Health: 3, Consistency: 8}

FiberOne Shredded Wheat – If you like shredded wheat, give this a try. I don’t care for SW myself but once it was all that was available at Safeway so I gave it a shot. No surprise, it didn’t do much for me. It has similar health content to the Caramel Delight (12g of sugar instead of 10, same fiber content) but without the great taste. Additional sweetener is optional. {Score: 22, Taste: 6, Health: 2, Consistency: 4}

FiberOne Raisin Bran – I don’t do raisin bran, so I have no idea how it tastes. 11g of fiber (43%) and 13g of sugar per serving.

FiberOne Grape Nuts – Inexplicably, this does not exist. I can’t imagine that adding fiber to grape nuts would affect the taste at all. Come on FiberOne, get to it!