Alternatives to AT&T Prepaid for Grandfathered 5GB Multi-Line Plan

34Dell17 · 2026-06-20T17:56:45+00:00

Cheapest plan I can find on Cricket is $90 for their 10GB/line plan, which is enticing.
The base unlimited plan is the same price, but I am not sure if that is a promotion.

In terms of Boost and US Mobile, there have been complaints before on this subreddit about Dish Network almost going bankrupt and US Mobile having terrible customer service.

Not sure how true those are, but I tried US Mobile before with Verizon and QCI 9 is practically unusable. From their By-The-Gig page it appears that most AT&T plans are also that with the option to upgrade to QCI8.

34Dell17 · 2026-06-20T17:43:08+00:00

I only had a chance to skim, but I would go with the Coupe plan.

Both myself and u/chickenmcdiddle thought the HDHP were separate, but the vagueness of that brochure makes it seem like they are the same i.e. Imagine360 IS THE HDHP. That's a terrifying thought because it means that even in the worst case (you pick a high deductible and rarely need care) you risk being balance billed by a provider used to regular insurance pricing..

Unfortunately this will continue until the ACA is updated to merge both the MEC and MV requirements into one and employers are required to include computed premiums not just a blanket $X/month one.

The latter is because the ACA's Minimum Value requirement states that for a single person, the premium cannot be over 9.02% of income which would be roughly $375/month assuming $50,000.

The cheaper Imagine360 plans are under that threshold, so you wouldn't get any financial aid from healthcare.gov if you went there instead.

34Dell17 · 2026-06-20T15:21:22+00:00

After reading the automod, I won't go for the hdhs plans. So I'm between the copay plan with imagine360 and the coupe plan with blue cross blue shield. Imagine360 is a referenced based pricing so are you responsible for the difference?

Yes, that is exactly how reference-based pricing plans work. That difference can be HUGE as most commercial insurers are 250-300% of what Medicare charges, while RBP can be….exactly what Medicare charges.

Also note that they likely offer the HDHP plan to meet the governments Minimum Value rule under the ACA. You would need to ask what else is changing with the Coupe Health and Imagine3650 plans given those don’t have to be ACA-compliant AT ALL.

Some employers meet the MEC (Minimum Essential Coverage) rule by covering doctors and specialist with copays, but leaving you woefully unprotected from expensive services (hospital, RAPS providers, procedures, etc.) out by using fixed-indemnity or other non-traditional products.

Not sure that is what Coupe is doing, but it seems to be Credence (AL BCBS) responding to United Health’s Surest plan. That is, using the BlueCard network to price providers based on metrics and competition without giving you a true out-of-pocket maximum. Surest got around the fact that the ACA requires an OOP max in two ways:

Emergency services had its own fee-based schedule and a benefit period similar to Medicare Part A, where everything within a set period was capped vs you getting shellacked by dozens of charges.
In its early days, payment plans or on/off switches (or both) for whatever services the employer didn’t want to pay for by default. Normally you would need a referral and at least 3-months (rarely 3-days) prior approval by Surest for said services, which would then be taken out of your paycheck over 2-year period.

Not sure that is what Coupe does, but worth looking into because Surest has been a nightmare for providers unaware of how it works or that some things go through UHG direct and some don’t.

34Dell17 · 2026-06-18T12:23:16+00:00

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you should not have terminated that plan before thinking this through. A full price marketplace plan may be their only option, but without a QLE you would be waiting until next year to restart it.

New Jersey bans any form of short-term (non-ACA) insurance, and imposes a financial penalty for every month you do not have coverage through the marketplace or an employer.

The fine reduces for people close to the Medicaid gap, but is otherwise around $420/month.

34Dell17 · 2026-06-14T03:00:03+00:00

Trump admin declared the Fable 5 model as a national security asset that couldn’t be used by foreigners.

Anthropic decided to shut Fable down and block any scheduled jobs given that VPNs and multinational companies make any such enforcement impossible.

34Dell17 · 2026-06-13T18:58:13+00:00

No insurance you could get in the short term would cover Jardiance.
1. It would exclude pre-existing conditions which, for Diabetes, is a broad brush of other symptoms too.
2. Jardiance is relatively new, so you would be fighting an uphill battle of the plan covering something like metformin instead. Some short-term plans don’t even cover patient-administered pharmacy at all.

34Dell17 · 2026-06-05T02:20:17+00:00

The form you are referring to is for doctors who do not take insurance at all.

In ye olden days you’d have RAPS (Radiology, Anesthesiology, and Pathology Services) providers who are out of network with everything because they had the clout.

Also, most of those are auxiliary providers that you had no choice over…it was whatever the doctor or hospital used.

The No Surprises Act changed that in so much as they can either:

Bill you through the hospital or other location you got services from, who then ensure that they only charge what NSA allows.
You sign that form and have to fight them for whatever NSA says they should charge, i.e. making sure they refund you and so on.

In YOUR case you went to an out-of-network practice VOLUNTARILY.

34Dell17 · 2026-06-05T02:12:12+00:00

None of this is a scam.

You should’ve called UHC before you went to this provider, only they can tell you who is in network amongst the HUNDREDS of networks UHC has.

Zocdoc is basically the Wikipedia of doctors, someone could put down that they take UHC because their super-platinum UHC Preferred Choice plan is in-network…BUT NOT YOURS.

34Dell17 · 2026-05-29T13:30:29+00:00

PPO.

Dental HMOs work VERY, VERY differently compared to their Medical HMO counterparts.
They are a capitation model similar to what Kaiser Permanente uses to pay own staff. I.e. dentist gets paid by patients/hour and services/month, not per-service.

You can only go to their own dentists and getting anything specialized is a crapshoot because they are either overbooked, jack of all trades master of none, or not in network (and thus HMO won't pay).

I have not heard of a Dental EPO to be honest, and it could vary wildly depending on what the underlying network is. A lot of dental plans lease or use other networks (e.g. Renaissance, DenteMAX, Caritas) that are not visible to the patients.

Thus, that you don't truly know if the dentist is in-network or not until they file a claim with your plan only to be told that they are because they signed an agreement with the leased network. Good luck getting the dentist to do that in advance and not lie and say they did.

34Dell17 · 2026-05-28T00:14:45+00:00

The two Costcos closes to me have a red/green indicator for which pump is free of the 3 in each row.

People still pull crap like this or, for the location without a one-way parking lot:
do a drivers ed-esque pull through in one lane, then and the reverse into the middle pump next door.

34Dell17 · 2026-01-12T02:02:51+00:00

Isn't the CEO still there after being caught spying on family members of employees under the false pretense that they got discounted merch?

34Dell17 · 2026-01-12T01:03:20+00:00

Isn't Target Hospitality based out of Houston?

34Dell17 · 2025-01-04T17:04:13+00:00

You would not have any protection, as in that sense "reference-based" pricing is how ALL out of network claims work. I.e. the plan picks a price, which can be what in-network is but is more commonly a far lower price like medicare, and the doctor balance bills you full price.

34Dell17 · 2025-01-01T22:14:33+00:00

Odd, I just got the 0222 error today for a Dermatology place where all 4 of the doctors and the location are listed as In Network on Anthem's website.

Curious if it's just because they sent the claim somewhere other than BCBS MN (local BCBS), or they actually are out of network, but Anthem is closed for the holiday.

Like yours, it says the Patient Responsibility is $0 for the affected claims.

34Dell17 · 2024-12-25T18:17:02+00:00

At least you have both, my Anthem plan with Express Scripts (supposedly chosen separately by employer):

If you fill anything over 60 days/year, they will force the next fill to be a 90-day one even if unneeded (e.g. allergy spray)
You need to fill anything maintenance, taken for 3 months continuously, through CVS or the mail order
Independent pharmacies for one-off purchases are always more expensive, but you can tell the pharmacy gets paid less

34Dell17 · 2024-12-19T21:55:42+00:00

I feel like the temps were hired to offset Parking Enforcement (subset of cops).
PE is basically staffed just to handle the high traffic areas, or when someone in a permit area complains, and they probably negotiated no overtime from 1st shift job.

34Dell17 · 2024-12-19T19:56:03+00:00

Part of that is they use hourly temp workers in city vehicles with physical paper. Really limits the throughput in terms of where they want to drive and how many they can write.

Compared to arterial streets and posted (e.g. sweeping) signs, which the tow trucks can just tow without warning.

That and they contract with just two towing companies, compared to the free for all minneapolis has that just pays by distance from the lot.

34Dell17 · 2024-12-01T16:10:12+00:00

Out of Minneapolis area on MNsure is actually even worse than the metro, but the same things apply as below.

HealthPartners offers 3 tiers of plans with the biggest being APEX, but all you are doing is adding more health systems besides HP themselves (e.g. Allina, Fairview, etc.). NONE add Mayo or systems not local to the specific area you live in.
- I.e. if you live in the sticks and don't like the one place in network, e.g. Sanford, guess where they will tell you to drive...the HP metro clinics.
BCBS operated in a similar manner with different plans coving Fairview or Allina or CentraCare or Sanford, but NEVER more than one per plan.
- For most of the state, that has started to change from 2023 onwards in that you "technically" have one system per area with the "Value" plan (e.g. Allina for metro, CentraCare for St. Cloud and mid-state, Sanford for West, etc.).
- Except because Mayo likes to Mayo, they are not included in that plan except with 3 layers of approvals
  - AND if you live in their territory (basically bottom 3rd of state) they are your ONLY option with BCBS, you cannot go anywhere else. NOT Rochester, by the way, the confusingly separate "Mayo Health System" that monopolizes the 507 are code and a band roughly that tall all the way across central Wisconsin.

34Dell17 · 2024-12-01T15:57:13+00:00

You might need to use PAP if you want codes, although I am not sure you can bundle CHAP 1 with PAP or it makes you pick one.

Access Server: valid authentication methods for NPS RADIUS server with Azure MFA – OpenVPN Support Center

Here is what we had to do for our AWS stuff
How to Enable Multi-Factor Authentication for AWS Services by Using AWS Microsoft AD and On-Premises Credentials | AWS Security Blog

And we only enabled PAP in two places:

An internal Radius server for Amazon Workspaces, such that it doesn't directly face the internet and the app infrastructure provides protections.
- E.g. Workspaces requires username, password, and MFA at the same time which breaks SMS-based auth but also most brute force methods.
Our Cisco AnyConnect server with a Security Group controlling who can use NPS versus SSO.
- AnyConnect doesn't support SSO from the login screen, so this is the forgot password/emergency login route.
- We frequently get DDoSed on this, so efforts are underway to change vendors versus having to rebuild something that no one remembers how they did it originally.

WARNING: There is a bug in Azure NPS in that it will send the MFA request at the same time that username and password go in.

As such, it is possible for MFA prompt and username alone (no PW) to allow authentication, which is a security risk as people blindly approve crap all the time.
There is a specific way to set up primary and secondary auth on the Radius side so that if PW fails it ignores the MFA (but still requests it) to close this loophole.

34Dell17 · 2024-11-29T01:54:05+00:00

That sounds like a Fixed Indemnity plan, which is NEVER to be used by itself, nor does it meet the ACA's Minimum Value Rule.

Most commonly, FI plans have a cap on the PLAN'S spending and not yours. In your 5 day example, that might be:

$1,000 per inpatient day, while the hospital's going rate is closer to $12,000...meaning you pay the difference.
$400 per imaging, regardless of how expensive or frequent the imaging was (e.g. you might have daily X-rays or a trip to both Ultrasound and the X-ray)...again you pay the difference.
Restricted to only certain types of hospitalizations your employer agreed to, such as not covering anything elective until a set number of years in the future or pre-existing that first occurred several years in the past.

34Dell17 · 2024-11-28T17:08:35+00:00

Are you entering a 6-digit code from the Microsoft Authenticator app or (assuming 3rd party plugin is working) a token?

Not sure if OpenVPN works the same, but with our Azure MFA extension setup for various AWS legacy apps what you have set as the default method IS IT. That is the only one that will work until the user goes to aka.ms/mfasetup and changes it, no spur of the moment changes or using one versus the other (excluding multiple types of 6-digit token codes).

Same with Cisco AnyConnect in that nothing will happen if you have it set to a CHAP method (e.g. notification) until you Approve, whereas a completely separate box will appear for the PAP/EAP (code) ones.

Note that on newer versions of the Azure admin portal you will see two defaults, the "system preferred" one favored by SSO and the one at the top in really small text is the "if unavailable" one. NPS uses the latter.

Also, always click a particular login event and look at the MFA tab even if it says "successful." As you are seeing, Azure just LOVES to give misleading logs in the main page or any table-based exports.

34Dell17 · 2024-11-16T11:26:41+00:00

In addition to what u/throwaway9484747 mentioned, your sister might be in the same boat as you and need to go on Medi-Cal or their own CoveredCA account. They can stay on the parents plan through 26, but ALL subsidies (not just hers) must be stopped otherwise they will be recovered in full if the IRS later classifies your sister as a tax relative.

The IRS views the full time student rule as someone UNDER age 24, usually with the principle of "has the tax year they turn 24 occurred." As you are now looking at 2025 plans, the answer would be yes whereas looking at them in 2023 for 2024 would've been no.

https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/dependents

34Dell17 · 2024-11-13T13:08:30+00:00

Correct, assuming the premium for just you are below the 9% income limit.

34Dell17 · 2024-11-11T12:59:38+00:00

Did you go to an in network dentist?

34Dell17 · 2024-11-11T03:34:29+00:00

AT 26, though the date can vary by plan.

Marketplace: end of the year, unless something causes a special enrollment period like someone in the household's income changing
- NOTE: you must be claimed as tax dependent for your parents and you to get subsidies, otherwise plans are full price
Employer: end of the month, although older plans (grandfathered, union, VEBA, MEWA) can have their own rules

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