Good Health Insurance
If you’re looking for affordable good health insurance, there are several things you need to check before paying that first premium. Start by getting several quotes, at least 3. Work with an insurance broker or check out the many insurance sites online. These sites will often offer you multiple quotes from competing companies if you’ll fill out one form. This makes it fairly easy and quick to get those quotes.
Once you have your quotes, you’ll want to compare them to find which is really good health care insurance. Here are the things to look for:
Make sure the insurance company has a strong credit rating. You could find the best, cheapest insurance in the world, but if it’s not from a viable company, you can’t be sure it will be around when you need it. Find good health insurance companies by checking out the ratings from A M Best, Standard and Poor’s, or The Street.
Check to see if you can use your own doctor and the hospital of your choice. HMOs generally offer cheaper policies, but they also tend to offer a limited number of health care provider choices.
Find out what the co-pay and deductible amounts are. If you are in good health, you can go with a high deductible/high co-pay plan and significantly lower your premium costs. If your health is not as good and you often need medical care, you’ll want to pay more in premiums while keeping a low co-pay and deductible.
Whether you go with the higher deductible or higher premium plan, make sure there is an out of pocket limit. Just like with the deductible, your premium will go down if you have a higher limit, but make sure to consider your medical needs. It may be smarter financially to go with a higher premium but lower out of pocket limit.
Along those same lines, check the lifetime payout limit on the policy. Good, affordable health insurance will often come with a million dollar lifetime limit—this is the most money the insurance company will pay for your care over the life of the policy. You can get a higher limit, but you’ll pay more for it.
Absolutely make sure there is a renewable provision in your policy. This provision guarantees the insurance company cannot cancel your policy when you become ill.
Check out the waiting period for pre-existing conditions. To save money, insurance companies will often limit coverage of pre-existing conditions for 3 to 12 months after the policy goes into effect. Any longer than that is reason to look for a different policy.
Good health insurance coverage will include emergency coverage. Read the fine print to make sure you don’t need your primary care physician to approve or refer you to emergency services. Obviously, emergency care needs to be taken care of immediately, not after tracking down your doctor.
Check and compare coverage in the policies you’re considering. If you need health insurance, you’ll probably need prescription drug coverage as well. If you are female and of the right age you might want maternity coverage. Some policies will pay for preventative services and memberships (like health club memberships or healthy eating classes), if you can’t decide between two similar policies, these perks might tip the scale for you.
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