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Health Insurance
America may have one of the best health care services in the world, but health insurance can be one of the biggest outgoings in a family’s monthly budget. This is why it’s important to choose the health care provider carefully, and using a comparison engine such as the one here, is one of the ways to start saving today!
A number of health insurance programs are currently run and heavily subsidized by the government, and these include Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Veteran’s Health Administration. Many employers also supply health insurance for their employees, the employees’ families and retirees. Many of these health plans can have “supplemental insurance” sold on which aims to cover some of the gaps in these systems at a lower price than full coverage insurance.
However a large and growing proportion of the population are not covered by their employer or the government and in the end will have to cover them. Although about 58% of Americans have some type of health insurance, about 9% have individual health insurance.
The range of products available through individual health insurance is similar to those provided by employers although most people who choose individual insurance tend to have higher levels of cost saving measures such as opt-outs and deductible expenses.
Self employed people can claim their health insurance and health insurance for dependent members of their family, as a tax deduction. This has the effect of quite dramatically lowering health insurance costs, particularly for higher earners. Employees can not usually get health insurance as a tax deduction.
Premiums tend to vary by age, gender and location. In some states insurers are allowed to set premiums by health status, and so people with bad health habits such as smoking or lack of exercise can end up with higher premiums. It also means that people with previous health conditions also have to pay higher premiums, and some of these people can have such high premiums that they’ve been called “uninsurable”.
One advantage of individual insurance is that it offers “guaranteed renewability“, so that if a healthy person were to later develop health problems the health insurance company would still have to keep that person on at the same premiums.
There are a number of different insurance plans in the United States. The traditional model was to pay a certain amount if the insured person developed a condition. This meant that the insurance company is not tied to the hospital and the insured person can choose where she gets her medical treatment. These are known as health indemnity or fee for service plans,
Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans are prepayment plans which are offered either by groups of doctors (Blue Shield) or hospitals (Blue Cross). Instead of reimbursing money to the policy holder if they fell ill, they directly provide the service to them. This has the advantage that if there is a cost overrun then the insurance plan will cover it. However there is no way to shop around for the best services.
Health Maintenance Organizations, or HMOs, are a fast growing part of the health insurance market. The individual contracts with the HMO who then act as a gatekeeper to the health care providers, or what is commonly known as a “panel“. Unlike the traditional insurer the individual does not have a complete choice, but unlike the Blue Cross plans the individual is not tied to a particular hospital. HMOs have been pioneers in “managed care” which aims to cut the cost of healthcare by emphasising preventative health and incentives for more efficient use of healthcare.
There are two types of non medical insurance that are commonly seen as health insurance. The first is disability income insurance, which replaces a proportion of the policy holder’s income if they can not work for health reasons. The other is long term care insurance which pays for the costs of care services needed due to age or disability.
Like all big spending decisions, these kinds of health insurance should be compared before being bought, and the comparison search engine here will help you choose the right health insurance plan.
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Health
