Individual Health Insurance Plans

You may have noticed more advertising of family health insurance coverage in the last year or so. Given the current economic environment, many individuals and families are choosing to secure health insurance coverage outside of a group plan. For some, this may be due to being self-employed. For others, it may be less expensive than the plan offered by their employer. For what ever the reason, more and more people are seeking individual health plans as offered by many insurance carriers.

Because many employers have to scale back on expenses, they are changing the benefits being offered to employees. In many instances, it equates to more money being withheld at each pay period. In order to make the health plan less costly to the company, they are altering current group health plans or altering the amount of company contribution. The result is a higher cost for the employee. It may be in the form of a higher premium, higher copays or coinsurance, or higher deductibles. Certain coverage, such as for dental care, may be reduced or eliminated. This leaves the worker with a decision to make.

For some employees, they opt to continue with the coverage being offered by their employer. Those with families are doing more research into health insurance coverage as it would be too expensive to continue with the changed employer plan. There are many individual plans available through well known carriers, and some that are not as familiar. However, it is not impossible to find an individual health insurance plan to fit the needs of your family.

Prior to starting your research, sit down and determine exactly what coverage you need. Do you need it just for yourself? Are you a single parent and just need coverage for yourself and a child? What type of health care expenses do you currently have and anticipate in the near future? How much can you afford to pay (premium, copay, coinsurance, and deductible)? Doing this helps to narrow your choices.

Once you start reviewing health plans, make sure that you understand the terminology. Do not be afraid to contact the company offering the plan and ask questions. Also, you want to find out if certain services are part of the plan, available as a rider, or even available at all through that carrier and don’t forget to ask about dental, vision or life insurance coverage.

If you are self-employed, never had health insurance or recently laid off you cannot afford to not have major medical insurance. Why? Because today’s leading cause for financial ruin and filing for bankruptcy is the inability to pay medical bills. By purchasing a major medical policy you are able to implement a cap on your out of pocket expenses, and have the support of a large organization to subsidize the majority of your medical expenses. To give you an idea of what a burden medical bills and can be, a 3 day stay in a hospital can run upwards of $28,000.

So the question is where are you able to find quality health insurance coverage if you are ineligible for an employer sponsored plan? Today, the web is a valuable resource for finding affordable health insurance options in your area. However, when you begin looking for a plan it is important to shop around for all options. Do not limit yourself to going to a single carrier’s website as it is very likely they may not have the most competitive rate in your area. It is best to use some sort of exchange or quote engine to observe all possible options in your area.

In addition, when trying to find health insurance, make sure that you are signing up for “real” insurance and not a discount program. Discount health insurance policies are dangerous because they do not cap your out of pocket exposure; i.e., you could be paying 50% of a million dollars in medical claims. A dead giveaway for discount programs is membership fees before signing up. Any real insurance carrier will not make you pay a membership fee in order to qualify for their plan. Also, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

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Do You Really Need Life Insurance And Why?

When it comes to life insurance, one of the most commonly asked questions is “is it really needed to have?” It goes without saying that arguments can be made on both sides, but you are recommended to think about a few circumstances where having a policy is truly incredibly useful.

So, as it was already mentioned, folks are battling with the mind or asking questions whether they really need a life insurance policy. Are you also one of them? You should not worry because you are not alone, many folks have being doing the same thing before they finally made up the mind to buy life coverage. The point is that it is never an easy decision for a young energetic man at the prime of his age.

It will be useful for you to know that these are just three major reasons for needing life insurance coverage: having a mortgage, family or kids and in the case you find yourself in one of these categories, then it simply means that you definitely need to purchase a policy in order to take care of the individuals you love.

It should be also pointed out that a lot of people may think that if the case is that they don’t have dependents, they don’t really need life coverage but this is not true. It is vital for you to understand that if you don’t have dependents now you might have them tomorrow or you may even bequeath your death benefits to charity homes or to any of your loved ones.

You need also to keep in mind that if the case is that you have spouse and children who depends on you, which your death might adversely affect their livelihood, life policy is very necessary for you.

The other vital fact for you to take into consideration is that in the case you are married without children yet, you should not shun a life policy due to one simple reason – you may need it in the future. Actually, your aged parents might be relying on you for their basic necessaries and your death might cause lots of hardship on them, don’t you see that life coverage may alleviate this ugly situation.

It should be also pointed out that the first thing that you will think about after making the decision to buy a life coverage is what type of insurance to buy how much. As a result it is principal for you to remember that there are two basic types of life policy that can give you adequate protection, whole life and term life insurance policies. You should also keep in mind that your marital status, number and age of your children, mortgages, loans and your future expenses needs to be evaluated before you decide on what kind and how much insurance you need.

To go into more details there is a need to state that your present financial situation is what you consider first, as calculating how much insurance you need is never a thing to be guessed. Though, it is a condition that you have to buy a life policy of a minimum of seven years from your present yearly income.

To finish, it should be mentioned that the fact that you definitely wouldn’t want your dependents to go through a lot of hardship when you’re no more makes life insurance policy essential to everyone. You need to acquire whole life insurance policies today, for the future of your dependents.

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