What Everyone Should Know About Health Insurance

Everyone deserves to have some sort of protection from the high expenses associated with medical problems. It is hard to ignore how critical our health is to our overall happiness. It is also hard to ignore how critical maintaining our good health is to allowing us to do our part in life.

Because one never can know what might happen to him or her, it is very important to have medical insurance to cover regular exams. This is important because prevention can go a long way towards helping us avoid emergency situations. A good health insurance plan should also be able to take care of the cost of the major care you'd need after a stroke or other medical emergency.

All individuals become sick sooner or later. We might fall victim to an accident. The costs for the health expenses incurred due to these occurrences carry the possibility of depleting one's life savings, and in some cases, causing an individual to file for bankruptcy. Hospital costs are on the rise. Inflation for medical treatments is rising much faster than general inflation. This is why it is so vital to carry health insurance.

Some may say that the cost of medical insurance itself is going through the roof and that is the reason they choose not to purchase it. However, at the first sign of health troubles, he or she will find that not buying health insurance in the end is much more expensive. A medical bill for an outpatient procedure can be ten thousand dollars or more. Not having health insurance can be much more costly than having so called costly coverage.

An alternative that can help keep your monthly costs down is a high deductible health insurance plan. These plans can pay for large expenses. These policies don't pay for most small expenses. The benefit is that the costs are low.

Health insurance was not created to help one pay for minor things, such as regular office visits. Health insurance real purpose is to pay for surgeries and emergency room treatments and care for long-term illnesses.

The two major types of medical insurance are Indemnity and managed care. As time goes on more and more indemnity plans are being replaced by managed care. However, both types are still around and can be purchased in most areas.

An indemnity policy is one in which the insured has an increased flexibility of providers from which he or she can choose. As long as the care needed is covered in his or her policy, then the coverage typically pays all but 20% of the bill after a deductible. Before health care reform one of the main drawbacks of this type of coverage was that it might only pay for illnesses and accidents; there may not have been coverage for preventive care. The health care reform mandates that went into effect in September of 2010 changed this for most policies purchased after that date.

Managed Care insurance is much different than an Indemnity policy. On a Managed Care policy, the individual is very limited in the choice of physicians that he or she can see. There may only be coverage if the plan authorizes the treatment. If the certain treatment that one needs is not covered, he or she will have to pay out-of-pocket for those services.

Although health insurance is both expensive and confusing, it is critical to have. No good financial plan is complete without coverage for a potential hole in your pocket as huge as the potential cost for health care.