Affordable Individual Health Insurance

By: EconomyWatch Content   Date: 18 February 2010

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Though adding more family members to the existing group insurance may seem easier and convenient, the economics of such a decision usually deters people from doing so. Any further additions in a group insurance are costly. For extended coverage, people must look for affordable individual health insurance plans, which offer bigger and reliable coverage.

 

Affordable individual health insurance plans can also serve as a backup when you leave your job or the employer stops offering the coverage. They can also let you include family members at lower prices or for no cost at all.

 

Managed Health Care: Affordable Individual Health Insurance

Most affordable individual health insurance plans are managed health care options. Managed health care is mostly affordable as it eliminates the unnecessary medical overheads by acting as a link between the patients and the medical facilities. Managed care comes in three types:

 

Health Maintenance Organization (HMO): This is introduced as the best way to check the increasing healthcare costs. Typically, an HMO assigns one primary care physician as the first point of reference. Any specialist treatments have to be referred by him/her. Doctors outside the network can be referred but the insurer doesn’t offer coverage for them.

 

Preferred Provider Organization (PPO): This is the most flexible of all the managed healthcare options. One can pick the doctors and the medical facilities for medical check ups and see any doctor, without the need for referrals from the network doctors. The cost, however, is slightly more than the HMOs.

 

Point of Service (POS): This combines the best of the aforementioned types. This plan lets the patients decide the type of healthcare coverage right at the time of using the service. For example, if a patient stays with a network and seeks referral for other specialist, the co payments get levied. In case he/she misses the referral, then the complete amount must be paid in full.

 

While picking an affordable individual health insurance, it is important to ensure that you are not persuaded by the lower price alone. Based on the industry standards, a lower premium usually means high deductibles or low coverage. Either case may not suit your urgent requirements for bigger coverage. For the same reason, buying an affordable individual health insurance makes sense. However, study all the factors collectively and buy a plan that does justice to your money as well as medical conditions.


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