Most people when buying any type of insurance will look first and foremost at the insurance premium being quoted, and secondly they might possibly look at the financial state of the company to make sure it is a viable company before buying insurance.
The need for cheap insurance of all sorts is paramount for many people, given the wide range of different types of insurance policy for an individual’s health, home and auto that are needed in today’s society.
Unfortunately, low cost health insurance does not really fit into this mindset of simply going by the cost of the premium. The cost of the premium is important, but there are other costs involved both within the terms of the policy and costs that are not part of the policy that need to be taken into account.
Benefits and Deductibles
Health insurance policies are costed specifically in terms of the range of benefits and the range of deductibles that will apply to an individual or their family or to various parts of the policy. Low cost health insurance by way of a lower premium will inevitably mean either very highly restricted benefits, much higher deductibles or a much higher coinsurance percentage than would otherwise be the case.
Some low cost health insurance policies that have a seemingly low health insurance premium also have a 100% coinsurance clause, that effectively means the insurance company expects the policyholder to pay half of all costs involved in the treatments that relates to the benefits that the policyholder is seeking to claim under.
That by any standards, is not low cost health insurance. The balance between the cost of a premium and the cost of deductibles and co-pays and coinsurance clauses is quite a complicated process, especially when trying to compare different policies with each other on a like-for-like basis.
The nature of trying to work out the real cost of a health insurance policy can be quite a time-consuming and disheartening process. One way through this, is to really work out first and foremost who needs to be covered under a low cost health insurance policy, and specifically what benefits are needed and what benefits are not needed.
This would give you the individual a plan of your own that you can then use as a template to check against any other health insurance plans that may be available to you to work out which is most appropriate. Once you have done this you can potentially work out the likely cost of any claim under the policy and choose the one that is likely to be cheapest in the long-running.
One other factor when choosing a low-cost health insurance policy is that some insurance companies offer a rebate on the deductible over time if not used, similar to a no claims discount on auto insurance. This can lessen the cost of a policy over time.
