Choosing the Best Health Care Policy
There are many different considerations for an individual who wants to obtain or change a health care policy. Health care insurance policies come with many different options and prices depending on what the policy covers. Sometimes the individual's job, professional organization or union will provide a group health care insurance plan, while others do not and require the individual to find private health care policies.
Group or Private
Group health care policies are usually less expensive than private health care, or indemnity policies. The reason they can be less expensive is because insurance companies offer deals to large organizations that will be insuring many people under that organization's policy. In addition, the individual may also be offered the incentive to choose the group health care policy by the organization offering to pay a part of the premium for the individual should they choose the group plan. Both of these measures make the group health care policies less expensive than indemnity policies.
There are drawbacks to choosing group health care policies, the biggest of which is the lack of choices in the policies. Some organizations do not give a choice in group policies; they only offer one plan for their employees which only vary according to the number of people that are covered in the policy. Organizations that do give a choice usually only offer two or three choices, usually varying between HMO, PPO or POS plans. These plans are managed health care policies, which mean that the individual usually has to choose from a list of providers in order to have the least amount of out-of-pocket expenses. With an HMO, the individual does not have the choice to go off the list of providers unless he wants to pay the entire cost himself. With a PPO or a POS, the individual can go off the list, but the cost is more in out-of-pocket expenses than if he stayed within the recommended choices in the health care policy.
Individual or private health care policies provide the individual with a lot more options, but are usually more expensive than a group health care policy. Private health care policies also may require the individual to file his own claims for reimbursement, which means more paperwork for that person. However, the individual usually has more choices of providers under these plans and can shop around for the best prices on the market according to what he needs, such as long-term care insurance.
