Health Insurance: Tips for Understanding Your Policy

by Jim Russo
Do you get a headache trying to understand your health insurance? If you do, and it is very likely that you do, you are not alone in this. It does help most people when they at least have an overview of what health insurance does and does not do.

Tip number one is to remember that insurance is not designed to cover every little health related detail in our life. There are many things that no large corporation can do more cheaply and effectively than what you can. In the same way that you do not expect your car insurance to cover the cost of replacing a tail light bulb or changing the oil in your engine it is also unreasonable for us to expect health insurance to cover the cost of aspirin for the occasional headache or Pepto-Bismol for when we've eaten too much.

Just imagine how high monthly insurance premiums would be if they also had to cover the occasional headache and upset stomach. The cost would be astronomical both for the aspirin and the monthly insurance premium. Over 30 years ago a hospital charged my wife and $.75 for two aspirin. Can you imagine how much they charge now? Compare that to how much you pay for a bottle of 100 aspirin.

Tip number two is to make an attempt to understand what kind of an insurance policy your employer is providing you or what kind of insurance policy you have purchased directly. If it is an HMO then you'll have one set of rights and responsibilities that you need to follow. On the other hand, if you have a traditional indemnity insurance policy then you likely will have much more freedom of choice in terms of picking your own doctors and hospital but the cost of that policy is going to be dramatically higher either in terms of premium cost or more limited benefits.

Thankfully, as more and more information comes to light in the world we understand that are personal decisions in life relating to our healthcare do have a diuretic influence one the cost of healthcare to society and its direct cost in our own individual lives. It's, for instance, a whole lot cheaper for everyone if we moderate what we eat and get some regular exercise in our lives. When we had the opportunity to live healthier life styles we do help keep health insurance cost under control.

the decisions about your own personal health that you make one a day to day basis, while dwarfed by the inefficiencies of private corporations, not only reduce our own out of pocket expenses but also improve the quality of our personal life now as well as 10 and 20 years later.

Health insurance is much more complex then we would desire in large part because each and every state legislators beside that their constituents deserve a certain kinds of coverage to be involved in every health insurance policy. While this seems nice on the surface the result is that prices for health insurance vary from state to state dramatically.

This fact of mandated coverage's makes it very difficult to compare your coverage and its cost with your Aunt Mary's coverage when she lives in another state. While the specifics are difficult to come pair it is always wise of you to at least have good knowledge of Hal health insurance works and what kinds of coverage's are available to you even when your employer is already providing basic coverage for you. A good over all working knowledge of health insurance will save you money and improve the quality of your life.
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