Hey gang. I figured I'd give this a shot here, seeing how this is predominantly an older crowd that might have some experience in this area.

In a month I'm about to lose my current healthcare coverage. I've looked at staying with the same provider, only as an individual. However, the rates are going up next month from what was once mildly expensive to something that's quite expensive.
While I can swing this, I'd rather find a less costly alternative. In past situations, I've used COBRA, but COBRA is not available to me this time.

Does anyone have any experience with finding and joining group health plans. For instance, I stumbled on the National Assossiation of the Self-Employed http://www.nase.org
Anyone have any experience with them? IEEE also has such a program but you must have been a member for 2 years before taking advantage of their benefits (I knew I should've joined years ago ) I also recall there were similar associations of developers and contracters that also had group health coverage, but I can't remember their names.

Alternatively, there also exists temporary health coverage that typically costs 50 - 100 dollars a month for 6 months. From what I can tell, this appears to be coverage
for unexpected/emergency health issues. So it doesn't cover the typical things like physicals, perscriptions. Anybody use something like this?

This seems like an attractive short term alternative to me given the fact that my current situation requires me to be self-employed in a nearly fulltime capacity probably til late fall or the end of the year until I finish existing contracts. Obviously I'd have to look in detail at what exactly they cover and what they don't.

Any thoughts or recommendations based on past experience with different providers and programs?

Thanks folks.