Individual Health Insurance: the Minimum to Know
Individual health insurance is undoubtedly much more expensive in comparison with family health insurance or group health insurance. Besides the process of purchasing individual health insurance is also different. In case you aim at buying individual health insurance plan, you are to pass medical examinations and answer certain set of questions concerning your state of health whereas group plans doesn't require anything like this. Notice that your state of health, age, history of diseases, personal habits including bad habits and your income play very important role as far as according to this very information insurer/health insurance company decides whether you are risky consumer for them or not.
You are really lucky if you are insured through your employer, however if you are self-employed or unemployed, you'll have to search for individual health insurance plan in order to insure yourself against possible medical emergencies which are undoubtedly very costly nowadays. Although today health insurance is very important, at the same time it's very expensive and it makes sense to shop around for affordable health insurance. There is no doubt that you can think that regular check-ups are nothing else but senseless waste of money, however you should also take into consideration such situations when you can really fall sick or can be involved in some accident and have serous health problems.
First of all decide for yourself what kind of health insurance plan you need, whether you want to choose a doctor you like and pay higher premiums every month or you can agree to choose doctor from a certain network proposed by your health insurance company and spend less money on premiums. Decide whether you need a basic or major plan. There are three types of individual health insurance plans: managed care, fees-for-service and catastrophic insurance plan. In case you purchase managed care plan, you'll be provided with basic health insurance coverage and will have to choose your doctor from insurance provider's network, more over your premiums will be rather low. Fees-for-service plan gives you right to choose your own doctor, however you should remember that this plan doesn't presuppose preventative health care as far as regular check-ups are usually not covered with this very plan. Catastrophic health insurance plan doesn't cover regular health care expenses but by means of this plan you can cover major cases of hospitalization.
Undoubtedly your health insurance plan has to meet your medical needs and your budget. In case you know for sure that everything is okay which your health and finances, both fees-for-service plan and catastrophic plan are good choice for you. However you have some health problems and need regular preventive health care, do choose managed care plan. In case you aim at low cost health insurance, you should remember that low premiums are only half of the deal as far as it's very important to find reliable provider/company, in order to be sure that you can contact them any time you need and get required information or help. |
