Everything You Need To Know About Choosing A Health Insurance Plan
Overview
By providing you with insurance coverage for certain health and medical care services, health insurance serves to protect you against the astronomical expense of medical care. You typically have to pay a monthly premium, a deductible, and co-payments to use the services. Insurance is far less expensive than paying for medical care out of pocket. Health insurance comes in three fundamental forms: pay for service, consumer-directed, and managed care. These fundamental insurance plans cover hospital, medical, and surgical costs as well as prescription drugs, mental/behavioral care, and dental care, depending on the specific plan you select.
Choosing A Health Insurance Plan
In a fee-for-service arrangement, the healthcare provider you select will be compensated for each service that is rendered to you. You are free to select your own physician, and either the physician or the patient may submit an insurance claim. A managed care plan will give coverage to its subscribers and rewards to customers who select doctors within the company’s network. HMOs, PPOs, and POS plans are the three different forms of managed care plans.
You can access medical treatment through an HMO’s network of collaborating doctors. Typically, you will choose a primary care physician, who will then refer you to a specialist as needed. A PPO combines a number of HMO and fee-for-service features. Members have the option of choosing a doctor from the network and paying less up front, or choosing any doctor they choose and paying more out of pocket. Members of a consumer-directed health plan have more alternatives and choices when choosing their medical care. Consumer-directed plans have a fund or account set up for medical costs. Unused monies will carry over to the following year at the end of each calendar year.
The cost of obtaining health insurance is the premium that must be paid to the insurer. You can pay premiums on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. According to the conditions of your insurance plan, deductibles are the sums you must pay for covered services within a specific time period in order to be eligible for insurance benefits. Members with a high deductible might be required to pay the first $1,000 of annual medical costs out of pocket before their insurance starts to pay, and those with greater or lower deductibles would have to fork over more or less money depending on the specific amounts outlined in their plan. A co-payment is a set dollar amount or percentage that the member is required to pay for each visit to the doctor, procedure, or medication. For instance, if your insurance only covers the first $25 of each doctor visit, you would be responsible for the remaining costs. Your co-payments are defined to be $25. Prescriptions, doctor visits, hospital stays, and surgical procedures all have varied co-payment amounts specified by the majority of insurance plans.
Conclusion
The cost of medical visits and hospital care, the monthly premium, the deductible, and the co-payment amounts must all be taken into account when deciding which sort of health insurance plan is best for you. Make sure the plan you select covers services you will really need, such as out-of-network care, medications, lab fees, and treatment for preexisting diseases. If the insurance plan has a network of doctors, look into the doctor dropout rates for that network as well as the number of members who have left the insurance plan in the previous year. You should also look into the rating of the insurance business in question. Although employer-sponsored health insurance is typically the least expensive option, you should think about purchasing an individual health insurance policy if your work does not provide coverage. The expense of medical care is too high to take a chance by going without insurance.
