Having Low Cost Health Insurance Is Critical To Your Financial Success

Every individual and family should find low cost health insurance as part of their personal financial planning. To some of you this may sound all too obvious. But today, over 147 million Americans have no health insurance at all. For those that do not have it, many families are paying monthly premiums that are as big as their rent or home mortgage. This should make it obvious that health care has become a major part of everyone's personal financial plan.

To request FREE, no-obligation quotes for low cost health insurance, simply complete the form below. We'll shop multiple insurance companies in your state to help you find the best price available. Your information will be kept confidential and will not be sold or rented to anyone.

So it's important, you already know that. Now, how can you make sure that you have low cost health insurance that is giving you the most benefits for your dollar?

Health insurance has a lot of moving parts that you can adjust in order to make the premiums more affordable. Let's go through the major things that will affect your monthly premiums:

1. Co-Pays.

This is what you pay when you go to the doctor for an office visit. It usually covers everything done in the doctors office (but there can be exceptions to that). 10 years ago it wasn't uncommon to have a $5.00 co-pay. But these days, if you are paying $15 you're doing pretty good. Increasing your co-pay is one way to reduce your premiums for your policy. Try to estimate how often you go to the doctor. If you have a lot of kids like I do, you're probably at the doctor all the time. Having lower co-pays is a good thing for my family. If you don't typically go to the doctor, having co-pays of $30 or $40 for an office visit will make sure that you have low cost health insurance. You will pay more when you go, but you'll save a lot in the long run.

2. Deductibles.

Your deductible comes into play usually for surgeries and hospitalizations, and some of the expensive types of scans. If you are hospitalized, you are going to have to pay your deductible first before the insurance company pays anything towards your care. Having a very low deductible like $250 or $500 sounds good, but it will make your monthly premiums very expensive. If you want to have low cost health insurance, you will need to increase your deductible. But making it too high can put you at risk of financial hardship if your kid breaks an arm, or you fall off a ladder. Deductibles are a per person amount (unless you have an HSA qualified plan, then it may be one amount for the whole family). Most family policies have a maximum limit of 3 people in the family hitting the deductible in a given year. So if your deductible is $1000 per person, and you have 5 people in your family, the most you would ever have to pay towards deductibles in a year would be $3000 (if 3 family members happened to be hospitalized in the same year). Make your deductible high enough that your monthly premiums are affordable, but not so high that you would be in a major bind if 1 or 2 family members had to pay it in the same year.

3. Coinsurance.

All insurance plans have a coinsurance component to them. This is a shared cost between you and the insurance company, and it comes into play after you have paid your deductible for the year. The most expensive policies would have 100% coinsurance where the insurance company pays 100% of the costs after you've paid your deductible, and you pay nothing. Most people choose a coinsurance of 80/20, 70/30 or 50/50. A low cost health insurance policy would have a 70/30 or 50/50 coinsurance. By shifting more risk to yourself, your premiums will be lower. Your portion of the coinsurance will also have a maximum amount that you would ever have to pay in a year. For example: Let's say you have a deductible of $1000 and 80/20 coinsurance. You get into an accident and go into the hospital, and the bill is $10,000. You would have to pay the $1000 deductible first. Now your coinsurance kicks in. On the remaining $9000 of the bill, the insurance company is paying 80% and you are paying 20%. 20% of $9000 is $1800, so you would have to pay another $1800 and the insurance company would pay the remaining $7200. Now let's also say that your coinsurance maximum is $2000 for the year. So if something else happened to you later in that same year, you would only need to pay another $200 (since you'd already paid $1800, another $200 gets you to your $2000 max). After that, the insurance company pays for everthing else.

4. Prescription Drug Deductibles.

Most policies will have some form of coverage for prescription drugs. This usually comes in the form of co-pays that you pay to fill your prescription. If you want to have cheap health insurance, you can choose to have a separate deductible for your prescription drugs. This could be $200, $500 or even $1000 per year. This would mean that you would have to pay for your prescriptions out of pocket until you had paid your deductible each year, and then the co-pays would kick in. Again, consider your situation and how often you typically fill prescriptions. If it's just a couple of times per year and you usually get generics, you may want to choose a higher separate drug deductible. This could save you a lot of money. But if you have a bunch of kids who are constantly getting ear infections, and your pharmacy knows you by name, it might be better to go with a lower drug deductible or not one at all.

If you would like to get some FREE quotes for traditional affordable health insurance from major carriers in your state, just fill out the form at the bottom of this page now.

What If I've Been Turned Down?

Many people today are finding it difficult to obtain low cost health insurance due to their medical history. Insurance companies are turning down more and more people all the time, or charging them so much that they can't afford health insurance.

If you have dealt with things like high-blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, cancer, etc. (the list seems to go on and on) then you already know that it's very difficult to find affordable health insurance. For these people, there are some excellent limited benefit health insurance plans available. These affordable plans are guaranteed issue health plans with no medical questions asked. Everyone pays the same, male or female, no matter what your age. These plans pay the doctor or hospital a fixed amount for each service received.

Watch out for discount plans!

Discount plans are not health insurance, they are merely what they say they are, discount plans, not low cost health insurance. There is a reason why they are cheap to buy, it's because they don't really do very much for you. You may get some discounts at some doctors offices, but you're going to be on the hook for most of the cost. If you have no insurance at all, all doctors and hospitals will give you a discount anyway. You don't need to buy a discount plan for that. Discount plans are also not considered creditable coverage.

To avoid problems with pre-existing conditions, you need HIPPA certified, creditable coverage, or health insurance. Limited benefit plans are real, HIPPA certified, creditable coverage health insurance. It's very important to have HIPPA approved coverage without a lapse in coverage of more than 63 days. As long as you've had continuous coverage from this type of plan (without a lapse of more than 63 days) then a health insurance company cannot exclude coverage for any pre-existing conditions that you may have. This is why you need to get coverage quickly if you've lost your job and lost your benefits because of it.

If you would like to get FREE quotes for traditional health insurance or limited benefit health insurance plans available in your state, just fill in the form below. We will shop around to all the major companies that do business in your state to help you find the most affordable plan. Your information will be kept confidential and will not be sold or rented to anyone.

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How To Save Money On Your Healthcare

Many people don't realize that you can, and should do the same thing for healthcare related services and low cost health insurance. The reason most people don't think of this is that for most services you receive, you just pay a co-pay and that's it. Once you pay your co-pay, you don't really care what it costs, and neither does the doctor. However, depending on where you receive the service and how it's billed, may be covered by a co-pay, or it may go towards your deductible (which means you'll have to pay for it out-of-pocket).

Let me give you a recent PERSONAL example of this. My wife was told by her doctor that she needed to go have a CT scan done. The doctor scheduled the appointment for her at an imaging center owned by the same hospital network that he worked for. Now this was after we had told him that we wanted to have to test covered by a co-pay if possible, and not have it go towards our deductible. We also told him that she had previously had some imaging done at a certain center where we knew it was covered by a co-pay. We thought that was the place he had scheduled the appointment. When we arrived at the imaging center for her appointment, she was not on the schedule. They made some phone calls and found out that she was scheduled at another nearby imaging center, the one owned by the same hospital network that my wife's doctor was in. So we went over there and spoke to them, and found out that if she had the scan done there, it would go towards her deductible and would cost us about $2,000 out-of-pocket. But if she had the scan done at the other imaging center that was not part of that hospital network, all it would cost us is a $15 co-pay. What a difference!

This is why we have a page about low cost health insurance on this personal financial planning site. Health care costs have become a huge part of a person's finances, and it's very important for everyone to understand how to save money on these services. The more you can save on healthcare and on low cost health insurance, the more you'll have to pay off debt or invest for you future retirement. Healthcare professionals and hospitals are running businesses, and are trying to make them as profitable as possible. This recession is hurting the healthcare industry just like everyone else. Because of this, you really should not assume that your doctor is going to always act in your financial best interest. You need to take responsibility to do your homework and shop around to make sure you're getting the best possible price for the service you will receive.

The fact that the same service could cost your either $2,000 or $15 depending on where you get it is ridiculous and should tell you that there is a lot of work to be done to straighten out our healthcare system. That would take a whole other web site to cover that topic.

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