Purchasing a Private Healthcare Insurance Policy
Finding private medical care cover can be scary for those who have always been insured by their company’s insurance cover. Below is revealed a well-tested process insurance brokers use to help their clients find the right plan for their needs.
3 Areas to focus on are monthly premiums, coverage and the strength of the company.
Carrier- Your medical care insurance carrier should be financially stable and therefore can pay your medical bills.
Quality of cover – The healthcare coverage must meet your needs. It should cover doctors and nurses, hospitals, labs and prescriptions. It should also have doctors and hospitals in their networks that are convenient to you.
Price- Your medical plan must be priced fairly relative to the benefits provided.
The basic procedure we use is to:
Determine which individual or family medical companies are worthy of being considered.
Determine which insurance plans offered by those health companies offer good cover
Determine which plans have the most affordable price relative to the medical insurance benefits provided
Healthcare Insurance Companies
An individual healthcare insurance carrier should have good AM Best ratings and be in good standing with your state’s insurance department. You may also want to do a Yahoo! search for complaints.
You might search for “Mega Life and Health complaints” before completing an application with that or any other carrier. Every medical care insurance company has some unhappy customers just by virtue of the volume of clients they have. However, a be warned if the complaints are too numerous.
One more thing to be concerned with is how much they pay in benefits as a percentage of the premium they take in. A quality company will spend about 80% of the money they take in to pay for their clients’ healthcare procedures.
Coverage – What does your healthcare insurance plan pay for?
There are two important aspects of health cover. One is the procedures that are covered. The other is the network’s list of medical professionals that the insurance plan includes.
Covered Healthcare Procedures
Your healthcare plan should cover you well and the hospital and should have a good lifetime maximum benefit. I suggest at least five million in cover. You should read through your insurance plan’s outline of coverage or official brochure to see how medical professionals, hospitals and medicines are paid for.
Medical Care Insurance Exclusions and Limitations
Most if not all healthcare insurance plans will have a list of procedures and services that are not covered. Most of the items in this section are reasonable and are included in the contracts of other companies also. Insurance policies typically will not pay for cosmetic surgery for example. However, there are often exclusions that you might discover in one company’s plan but not in another plan. Pregnancy cover is one example of this. Generally insurance plans will not pay for the costs of a normal pregnancy. The ones that do usually cost more when compared to otherwise similar policies that don’t pay for pregnancy. The exclusions and limitations section of your policy or its brochure should be read carefully before you commit to purchasing any healthcare insurance plan.
health Insurance Provider Lists
Knowing which medical professionals are in your medical insurance policy’s network is important for obvious reasons. You might be able to find a list of doctor’s who accept a given insurance plan online or by calling your medical care insurance broker.
Premiums – Finding the best affordable medical plan
It is easy to compare individual health insurance premiums, but it is more difficult to make sure you’re getting good coverage for your dollars.
Comparing Health Insurance Policies
Not until you have crossed out the policies on your list that have bad coverage and/or a lousy list of physicians should you start comparing the prices of the policies
The Best Health Care Insurance Protection for the Money
The right medical insurance coveragefor a typical family, may not be the best plan for you. Often the best policy is overpriced and does not offer coverage that justifies the extra that it costs. Make sure that any plan you decide to own is:
Provided by a good health insurer
Will cover your healthcare needs well
Is priced reasonably.
