Get Health Insurance

By: EconomyWatch Content   Date: 15 February 2010

About The Author

EconomyWatch Content

Follow The Money

EconomyWatch, Content Team

 

  • Dot Div
  •      

What is common between Hulk Hogan, Cassius Clay aka Mohammad Ali and you? It’s not the shoe size or the force of your punches, it’s the vulnerability to medical emergencies. No matter how strong you are, you should get health insurance, as medical emergencies can strike when you least expect it. To make matters worse, the high cost of health maintenance can deplete all your savings. As a matter of fact, medical expenses are one of the biggest reasons for people filing for bankruptcy.

How to Get Health Insurance

Getting a health insurance has become a lot easier with the advent of Web 2.0. With simple taps and clicks, one can find attractive deals. However the ground work yet remains the same, where one needs to be careful with reading the fine print of the health insurance plan.

Mentioned below are some traditional ways of getting a health insurance cover:

·        Sign on with the health insurance provided by your employer, or look for your own insurance plan if the company doesn’t offer it or you are self employed.

·        Use Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) to extend your coverage by 18 months once you leave the current employer. The premium is, however, to be made by you.

·        Use the services of health insurance brokers to compare plans and costs. National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU) is the right place to begin with.

·        Take out a fee-for-service plan. It offers you complete control over the choice of doctors. It, however, has a higher out-of-pocket cost. 

·        Consider any of the managed care plans, namely Home Medical Organization (HMO), Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) and Point of Service (POS). Each provides a selected network of doctors that one can refer to incase of medical emergencies. HMOs, however, are more restrictive in terms of outside the network referrals. POS combines the fine points of HMOs and PPOs.

 

Stay Alert When You Get Health Insurance Plans

Health insurance, though began with humanitarian and social objectives, has devolved into a commercial business for many issuers. They leave no stone unturned to make reimbursement tougher.

Therefore, while you get health insurance plans, watch out for clauses that refer to pre-existing conditions and exclusionary clauses that state medical conditions outside the coverage of the policy.

 

 


  • Dot Div
  •      

Most Popular in Health Insurance

Related Links
blog comments powered by Disqus