How You Can Find Health Insurance and Get the Best Low Cost Deal

What is the truth about health insurance? Is it possible to find low cost health insurance? The truth about finding low cost health insurance really depends on your understanding of a few key basics. Many people think that health insurance is all the same, but that is not true and making that mistake can cost you money. In this article I will try to help you understand some of the key concepts underlying present day health insurance.

Health insurance, just as with any other sort of insurance, is basically risk management. When you pay an insurance company their monthly fee–called an insurance premium–you are paying them to assume the risk of paying for you health care. The policy that you buy determines the benefits they will pay for should you become ill or injured. When you purchase health insurance, you purchase what is called a policy, which is generally a package of benefits, and the policy spells out the terms and conditions under which the company will pay.

When you start looking for health insurance, you quickly find that there are many different kinds of plans and ways in which the insurance benefits are packaged. For example, you may not know that you can purchase health insurance to cover you in case of dismemberment on the job, or insurance to cover you for specific kinds of hospital care. Maternity coverage would be another example of a kind of health insurance. Most people, however, think of health insurance in terms of doctor visits, hospital care, and emergency services. Finding the best low cost insurance for you means that you must think about which benefits are most important for you. When you start your insurance shopping, knowing what you need will help you choose from the packages offered by the many insurance companies.

Some of the kinds of insurance plans most commonly sold are health maintenance organizations (HMOs), preferred provider organizations (PPOs), and private fee for service plans (PFFSs). The HMO, PPO, and PFFS are different ways of packaging benefits. That means that each kind of plan will pay for different kinds of services and each plan will have different payment rates. A payment rate is how much they will pay health care providers for their services. HMOs are usually less expensive but generally require you to get all of your care only from providers in the plan's pre-determined network of doctors and hospitals. In an HMO you would be assigned a Primary Care physician, and a referral from that doctor would be required in order to see a specialist. Quite often, HMOs work better for individuals who in relatively good health and whose medical needs are not terribly demanding.

PPOs generally offer greater flexibility of coverage than HMOs. Whereas HMOs require that you receive care only from network providers, PPOs allow you to go out-of-network and do not require referrals. PPOs also include network providers (doctors and hospitals who have a contract to provide care to plan members), and care within the network will always be less expensive than going out-of-network. PPOs are often more expensive than HMOs but are generally considered to offer more coverage. You can see that if you understand you and your family's needs, you can determine whether a less expensive HMO or the more expensive PPO would be appropriate. Even though a PPO may be more expensive, if it more adequately meets your needs, it may less expensive in the long run. Some examples of the big health insurance names you may encounter include United Health Care, Humana, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Aetna, Cigna, Anthem, Tonik, Wellmark, and John Deere.

A PFFS plan is still a kind of managed care, but in the private fee for service plan, you go to any doctor or hospital you choose as long as they submit claims to insurance company and accept payment. In a fee for service plan, your health care providers would bill the insurance company a specific fee for each service provided. What the insurer pays is based on a fee schedule.

When you buy a health insurance plan, the actual cost of the plan is not only the price of the premiums, deductibles, co-pays and co-insurances. When you figure the real cost, you must also take into consideration the reliability of the company in living up to their promise of coverage for the kinds of services that are important for you and your family. Thus, a "cheap" plan could end up costing you more if the company doesn't cover the costs specified in the policy. Humana, for example, may offer you less expensive plans, but if you have to argue with them over meeting the basic agreements in the policy, then the coverage would be useless and the cost to you far greater than you had imagined.

You can find cheap quotes for health insurance, but the key to a low cost plan is in coming as close as you can to paying only for a relatively few number of key services. In other words, if possible, you strip the policy of every service you can possibly do away with and assume as high a deductible as possible. Also, you must verify the reliability of the company because it's important that they pay promptly and without argument should a time of need arise.

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