Written by The Scribbler

In the interest of saving you money (and to further expose the back-alley shell game that is inventory investment), let’s revisit a statement that’s undoubtedly #3 on the “I Don’t Think You Thought Your Cunning Plan all the Way Through” list. (#4 is, “If I use a can of Slim-Fast instead of flour in the double-layered, triple-iced cake I’m baking, I can cut myself a slab the size of a clipboard and it’ll still count as my “sensible dinner!”)

“Maybe you do want to quit your job but you say, “The company pays for my insurance.” Not true, the company doesn’t pay for your insurance, you do…DO YOU KNOW YOU CAN PAY FOR YOUR OWN HEALTH INSURANCE? THINK ABOUT IT!”

If you’re working a full-time job, yes, you are paying for your health insurance. I guarantee you, though, that you are paying your place of employment considerably less (and receiving more in terms of benefits) than a director who is paying for her own.

Want to know why that is? (Don’t be scared; this is the most entertaining article on insurance you’ll ever read.) The larger a company is, the more folks it has “paying into the pot,” so to speak. If some folks get ill, the insurance company loses little money because it has the rest of the “team” backing it financially. That’s why you might pay $200 a month but have no deductible whatsoever.

Things are different when it comes to self-paid plans. Since it’s just you paying into the pot, deductibles will be higher because if something happens to you, the insurance company’s going to lose money.

Mary Kay is generous enough to provide its qualifying directors with the Wellness Benefit, which is cash compensation meant to help you purchase health insurance. “Qualifying” means what you’d pretty much expect it to – “Apply Gasoline to Hula Hoop, Light, Jump, Repeat.” If you work your business enough to hit $60k wholesale, you get an entire $750 at year’s end. Reach $187,000 wholesale and you get $1,800. (Anyone else getting a visual of a bulbous-nosed, top-hatted socialite flicking a penny to a hobo?) That’s the beauty of the corporate workforce; you will never be required to balance and spin the Plates of Production in order to win (and maintain) your health insurance. You pay, you receive benefits, case closed.

I decided to do a bit of price checking on Ehealthinsurance.com (An “Orbitz” for the health insurance world). I pretended I was a director dropping her job for full-time MK and needing an individual plan. Heads up: If you are either considering Mary Kay or are a current IBC/Director being pushed to drop your job, here is what you could be potentially looking at as far as health insurance payments:

1. BluePreferred Value plan HSA Eligible Plan 1500 (Blue Cross Blue Shield) – $172.56 per month/ $1,500 deductible. There’s no maternity coverage with this one, so you might want to follow your NSDs advice to not have a baby as long as you have a goal poster hanging above your bed. Then again, the mere sight of Mary Kay Ash’s piercing mug staring down on your “Iron Man Encounters an Orion Slave Girl” fantasies is more than enough to keep potential children out of the picture until you’ve hit menopause. Brrrrr.

2. Humana Total/5200 HSA – $73.15 per month/$5,200 deductible. Most features in this plan offer 0% coinsurance AD (after deductible). What the heck is coinsurance? Elementary, my dear Watson!

Let’s say that you have a plan with 20% coinsurance and you want to have rice sacks implanted in your chest just in time for Seminar. You’ll pay 20% of the bill while insurance pays the remaining 80%. Be sure to get your entire National Area to rub your freshly amped-up bosom for luck! (Qualifying bosom-rubbers must have placed a $5200 “Order of Excellence” within the past week and have conducted a facial on anything that performs photosynthesis. Hey, your neighbor’s hostas may not have skin, but we don’t need to be prejudging now, do we?)

3. Aetna Preventative and Hospital Care 3000 – $80.00 per month/$3,000 deductible. This one carries no chiropractic coverage, so if your x-ray tech once told you that your spine resembles an Auntie Anne product, you’re out of luck. Stupid tech; you’d get a second opinion if their office wasn’t so conveniently nestled between Supercuts and Topkapi Nail Pagoda. Debate the pros and cons of radiology clinics located inside Wal-Marts all you like, but in the end, it’s your sacrum, champ. Whatever you decide to do will be fine with me.

Now that you have a general idea of what to expect from individual plans, let’s look at a couple of family ones. I still played the part of inquisitive director, only this time I factored in a husband and child:

1. Humana Autograph Total /5200 HSA – $122.98 per month, but you better be working that business hard to meet the gargantuan $10,400 deductible, especially if your husband has a heart attack after seeing how much you “stretched” to make Queen’s Court of Stuff I Swear I’m Going to Sell Next Month, Just Give Me More Time!

2. BluePreferred Value Plan HSA Eligible Plan 3600 – $299.46 per month/$3,600 deductible. Most features carry a 20% co-insurance AD, and that includes prescription medications! You’re going to need them once you give birth to your first child and realize that the labor and delivery hospital stay wasn’t covered. Ring up your NSD and pretend you’re collecting for charity. When she asks which one, tell her that it’s the newly formed, “Look, Madame Medusa; My Blood, Sweat, and Tears are Helping Fund your Icelandic Pool Boy/Personal Trainer, So the Least You Could Do is Front me a Little Something that Doesn’t Involve the Words “Darci” and “Scrunchie” Foundation.

Let me to give you one more example to help drive home the screaming ignorance of the “Do you know you can pay for your own health insurance?” line. My husband had laparoscopic surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his kidney last year. When all was said and done, the total bill was 40k. Thanks to my husband’s federal insurance plan, we paid $700 out of our own pockets. True, we pay $240 a month for that insurance, but it’s a very small price compared to what we would have paid had I been working MK full-time and using a self-paid family plan.

Suppose you’re a Director who needs to undergo the same treatment for kidney cancer (God forbid, but stick with me here). If you’re on a plan with 20% coinsurance, you will be shelling out 8000 out of your own pocket. (Remember, never say “dollars!”) While that 8000 might be a drop in the bucket for your NSDs (especially when some of them are married to spouses who own construction companies or practice medicine – “supportive” husbands, indeed) an 8k medical bill would be a significant setback to most women.

How many skin care classes would it take to completely pay off such an expense? How many hours of warm-chatting/phone work would you have to do in order to garner attendees for those classes? And can you imagine being diagnosed a month before Seminar? Here you are trying to budget funds to chip away at 8k and your upline is squawking, “But Mary Kay Ash attended Seminar with shingles, so a little Stage 3 cancer is nothing – you can’t afford not to go!”

Friends, if you choose to leave your job and put all of your chips into the basket marked, “Mary Kay Career Path,” know this: unless you’re swimming in money or utilizing your husband’s job benefits, make sure you make it clear to your family that getting hurt/sick while you’re a full-time MKer is out of the question and ultimately, out of your wallet.