Compare Health Insurance Plans and Save

When the cost of your health insurance premiums requires you to spend even the grocery money to pay the bill, you need to compare health insurance plans and rates. If you open your health insurance premium notice each month and find that it takes a rate hike each time, it’s time to look elsewhere for coverage.

Health insurance comparisons look difficult to do if you’re not familiar with the terms of health insurance language. It isn’t, however, that difficult. If you want more information before you compare health insurance plans, the first place to begin is with the terminology.

Terms

* Deductibles: a deductible is the amount you must pay each year before the insurance company begins to pay.

* Co-pay: Co-pays are part of the managed care plans. They’re small payments you must make every time you visit a doctor, an emergency room or use other type of health care.

* Co-insurance: Don’t confuse this with co-pay, it’s different. On many policies, once you pay your deductible, there’s a percentage of the cost you must pay before the insurance company picks up the entire claim. It’s often written 90/10, 75/25 or 60/40. The first number signifies the percentage of the bill the insurance company pays and the second number is the customer’s percentage.

* Maximum Out-of-Pocket: Once you pay a specific amount, including the deductible, you’ve hit the maximum out-of-pocket payment and the insurance company covers all allowable medical expenses.

Compare Health Insurance Plans

Managed care plans include PPOs, POS, and HMOs. The one thing these plans all have in common is a list of preferred providers. With an HMO, you can’t select anyone other than those on the list if you want the insurance company to pay any medical expenses. You also can’t go to a specialist if your doctor doesn’t give you a referral. The POS and PPO managed care plans offer you the ability to go to any doctor or health care professional but don’t pay as much of the bill or make you pay a higher co-pay if the caregiver isn’t on their preferred provider list.

HSA/HDHP stands for a health savings account and high deductible health plan. These plans require you purchase a policy with a large deductible. This is normally very inexpensive. The money you save on premiums then goes into a tax-sheltered savings account. If you need money to pay the bills before you meet the high deductible, you remove it from the plan. Anything that you don’t use during the year, rolls over to the next year and it’s yours to keep.

Short Term Medical Insurance: The policy is exactly what the name implies, insurance for a short period. These policies are ideal for people between jobs and often are far more inexpensive than COBRA.

Traditional Insurance: These plans pay any qualified doctor you select. They have a deductible and co-insurance. Often, because of the fewer restrictions, the cost for these traditional plans is more expensive.

While the list of terms and types of plans is short, it is enough to get you started to compare health insurance plans. You’ll find that much of the mystery of health insurance leaves if you simply know a few of the terms.

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