Every now and then I get to feeling like I really ought to have insurance. Some would say I’m stupid for not having it…I have a wife and 7 kids, after all. But my reasons for not having it are pretty good, I think.

• I’m self employed, so health insurance is particularly expensive. I’m on the hook for the entire tab.
• I don’t have any loan against my house. If needed, I could take out a line of equity.
• I could always negotiate directly with a health care provider in case of an emergency need like cancer or a catastrophic health crisis of some sort.

That said, I still wonder sometimes whether I should go ahead and pony up for a small insurance plan to cover worst-case scenarios. I just did a comparison shopping exercise on a website. I was not given enough space to enter all of my family members into their search form, so I entered the following:

• My wife and I
• Five of our children, including two full time college students
• No smokers in the family

In return, I got received quotes that ranged from $255.73/mo. up to $1015.66/mo. Blue Cross of Idaho and Pacific Source Health Plans were the only two health insurance providers quoted. These quotes were obtained November 16, 2010, and obviously were not final – I would have had to add a few more children to my policy to make the quote accurate.

Lowest Health Insurance Quotes

Highest Health Insurance Quotes

Here’s the company I used to get these quotes: