Individual Health Insurance
What is individual health insurance, and how can it save you money?Individual health insurance is health insurance that you obtain through some other source besides your employer. The main difference between it and employer sponsored health insurance (called group, more generally) is that, in most states, unlike group health insurance, any health insurance carrier located in the state where you live does not have to accept you as a risk. As a matter of fact, health insurance companies that sell individual health insurance have very stringent underwriting guidelines. Many people are turned down, and this is something you want to avoid if at all possible.There are state laws which govern various aspects of individual health insurance such as look back period, pre-existing credit, policy riders, maternity, and many other things. States which have the greatest number of consumer protection generally tend to have fewer health insurance companies offering policies in the state and higher premium prices. States with an insurance-company-friendly regulatory environment charge less for health insurance but exclude greater amounts of people from coverage and are allowed to put more conditions on the coverage they do offer.Individual health insurance is becoming increasingly popular among those who can qualify for it for two simple reason:
- It can save certain people a lot of money
- It provides a lot of choice and freedom
Should you consider individual health insurance even if you already have group health insurance?
Because health insurance companies reserve the right to exclude people with certain conditions and histories from coverage it is often less expensive than group health insurance. This is especially true for younger people since group health insurance rates are more expensive and are based on the average age of people ranging in age from early 20's to retirement age. And there are more kinds of plans that offered. Most major medical insurance companies like Aetna, Humana, Unicare, Blue Cross, etc. offer plans that range in price from $50 to $400. The cheap plan will get you basic coverage that will save you from financial catastrophe if you don't mind some risk on the front end. The more expensive plans are more like the typical health insurance plans offered by many employers. Again, with individual health insurance, you can pick and choose the kind of plan you want at the price point you want with the level of coverage that makes you happy.
Another not as well known advantage to having your own individual health insurance policy is that an indivudual health insurance policy it is yours to keep forever. Group health insurance, on the other hand, is tied to employment. This presents a hidden risk to anyone who has group health insurance and many people have found themselves in the unfortunate position of being out of work, sick or disabled and essentially uninsurable. Often illness or injur is the reason people have to leave work in the first place. To put it even more plainly, many people lose their health insurance because they get sick or become injured because it is these very things which can cause a person to lose ones job. This is why group health insurance is less reliable than individual health insurance even thoug it is easier to obtain and certainly seems more secure.
Employers who have 20 or more employees will usually offer COBRA to departing employees but COBRA is very expensive. COBRA is not a kind of insurance but a set of laws which set out how employer sponsored health insurance will be handled under various situations like divorce, birth, departure (voluntary or not), etc. In many cases COBRA simply means that you have the right to the health insurance benefits you were receiving (for a certain time) while you were with a former employer as long as you are willing to pay 102% of the cost. If your employer was paying the minimal amount for health insurance benefits which would be 50%, you health insurance bill will at least double once YOU start paying for COBRA. If your employer wasy paying significantly more than 50% of the group benefits you were receiving, you health insurance bill will triple or even quadruple once you have to pay for COBRA on your own. Obviously this can be difficult to do when you're unemployed and in the hospital and this is why many people lose everything they own when they become sick or injured even though they started off with health insurance benefits when the illness or injury occured.
Although Individual health insurance is most commonly sold to people who are self-employed it should automatically be considered if one is insuring dependents since significant savings are often possible if one studies the situation before dumping everyone on to the group health insurance plan offered through someone's work. It is not a given if someone's employer offers rich health insurance benefits and is willing to pick up the tab, this describes increasingly few employers in today's labor market.
There are probably millions of people who have group health insurance for their dependents and are paying more than they need to simply because they either don't know about individual health insurance or don't know how it works. People under the age of 40 are the ones who most definitely stand to gain by looking in to individual health insurance because it is they who will be able to most likely qualify. And it is they who most likely be able to While it is vitally important to compare several different policies before making a decision, the important thing to know is that individual policies are not much different than group health insurance policies. The one exception to this is maternity coverage. Don't ever switch to an individual health insurance plan before understanding how it will or won't cover maternity if this is something that might be relevant to you presently or at some point in the future.
Individual Health Insurance quote
The first place to start is right here on the interent at Beyond Quotes. If you have never looked at getting individual health insurance take a few minutes to get a quote. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
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