What is temporary health insurance?
Reader question:
What is temporary health insurance?
Annie
I’ll tell you.
Short term health insurance is a great medical health insurance option for people who are on the road in life but haven’t yet arrived. You may be between jobs, or not have a job at all, or it’s possibly that you are temporarily working for a company that does not provide its employees with health insurance coverage. If any of these situations apply to you, then you might want to consider getting temporary health insurance, which is often one of the cheapest medical health insurance options around.
Sixteen million people in the United States take out a new medical health insurance policy every year, and if you’re going to be one of them this year pay attention. It is possible to get cheap medical health insurance, and you don’t have to get catastrophic health insurance to do it. Not everybody has to pay terrible, high rates to get their medical care covered.
Most of these short-term health insurance plans come with up to two million dollars of coverage, and they are intended for people who are already in good health and don’t have any pre-existing conditions. This type of coverage is good for using to go to your check ups so that you don’t develop anything, or to cover any problems that you may develop during the coverage period.
There are many limits to these temporary health insurance plans, so before you settle on one you should make sure that you understand your plan’s limits and they are okay with you. If that is the case, it is also important to understand that short term health insurance really is very short term. For the most part, policies are taken out month by month and can last up to twelve months, although some companies offer policies that extend to thirty six months.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
How to shop for catastrophic health insurance
So maybe you have decided that you fit into the right kind of group that catastrophic health insurance will benefit best. You’ve considered your options and also considered the high amount of financial responsibility that catastrophic health insurance requires, and you have also considered the limits of its coverage. After understanding all of that, and making sure that you could have enough money to cover higher deductibles in the incidence of a medical emergency, you’re ready to start shopping for catastrophic health insurance. Here’s what to do.
- Ask how much your medical health insurance premium will cost you, both on a monthly and yearly basis. This is very important to know, because obviously the low monthly premium payment is the main draw that catastrophic health insurance holds.
- Ask how much the deductible will be.This is one of the most important things to ask about, because you need to know if you can afford the deductible if you get catastrophic health insurance,. because otherwise there isn’t a point.
- Do you want a lot of coverage or a little coverage? If you need more extensive medical health insurance coverage, then catastrophic health insurance coverage might not be the best for you, and you should definitely consider what your wants and needs are.
- Do you take any prescriptions? If you do need to pay for a lot of prescription drugs, you might do better with a different health insurance plan, because catastrophic health insurance does not cover drugs, and prescriptions cost quite a bit and the amount can add up if you are paying it all by yourself.
- Do you have enough money to pay for things like check ups on your own? If you don’t, then you need a different type of coverage. Doctor’s visits often cost a lot, and I know that when I was pregnant my doctor charged almost two hundred dollars per fifteen minute check up–which came every one to two weeks. That can add up if you’re paying out of pocket.
- Any pre-existing conditions? If you have one of these, you’re out. Catastrophic health insurance plans don’t take on the risk of people who already have a condition.
- Is it easy to get sick for you? Not every sickness can be covered by an emergency room visit, so you’ll probably need coverage that covers a regular doctor.
- How high up does the lifetime maximum go?
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
What does catastrophic health insurance cover?
Reader question:
What does catastrophic health insurance cover?
Lou
Good question.
Just because catastrophic health insurance seems very straight forward, don’t automatically assume that there is only one type of coverage available. In fact, depending on what company you go with and what type of catastrophic health insurance plan that you choose, the coverage varies and is not straight forward at all, so you should look very closely at youtr choices before making a sudden decision.
One company is the Blue Cross Shield in Florida, and it is a Florida health insurance company that has a catastrophic health insurance plan that it calls Essential. The deductible for Essential is around $250, and there is a maximum limit for expenses you pay of ten times that much. Once you have reached that limit, the company starts paying for your medical coverage until you reach the cap of one million dollars. It only covers things that involve your physical health, and hospital expenses such as emergencies and X-rays. Childbirth and drugs and check ups are not on that list.
If you got your catastrophic health insurance plan through Blue Cross Shield, then you could be paying a monthly premium as low as thirty dollars.
Another example is Golden Rule Insurance Company, the lowest deductible of which is $500 and the highest is $5,000. It covers about the same things as the Florida health insurance company, and it also does not cover the same things as they do. For Golden Rule, though, obviously the deductible costs a bit more, but at the same time the lifetime cap is much more, topping out at three million dollars. The catastrophic health insurance plan offered by Golden Rule is called Basic Plan, and it does cover things like MRI and surgery.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
Should I get catastrophic health insurance?
Let’s face it. Not everybody can be that lucky. That’s why even when you don’t want to bother, or can’t afford, to pay monthly medical health insurance premiums, you have to come up with some sort of compromise. The kind of person that tends to get catastrophic health insurance, which has lower monthly costs but covers much less than regular health insurance plans, tends to be either in their twenties or between the age of fifty and sixty five. Younger insured tend towards catastrophic health insurance because they are often either employed by a company that does not offer medical health insurance coverage, or are self-employed.
As for the other group that tends to get catastrophic health insurance instead of the regular, they are usually past the time in life in which they go in for medical check ups and are instead more preoccupied with major things that can come with age, like heart attacks and strokes. They’re usually only go in for a check up when they need to, and would rather make that a rare visit than have to pay more money for health insurance payments.
Catastrophic health insurance can even be bought through your employer, although most people who get it do so on their own. People who have already retired like to get catastrophic health insurance plans during the time that they are waiting to be of age to be eligible for Medicare. If a company employs more than one thousand people, catastrophic health insurance will be among the plans that it offers, usually.
Catastrophic health insurance plans do avoid customers who already had a condition when they bought the plan. If you have a disease such as AIDS or cancer, you probably won’t be eligible for such a plan, because, obviously, if you have to go to the hospital it won’t really be a catastrophe–more like business as usual.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
Catastrophic health insurance and high health insurance deductible
Reader questions:
Could you explain the high deductible plans of catastrophic health insurance?
Amy
Absolutely.
There are two major things that you must consider before you decide to get a catastrophic health insurance plan. The first is that you will only be covered for major hospital visits, and will have to pay for everything else out of pocket. The other major thing is that any catastrophic health insurance plan will come with a higher deductible than the usual medical health insurance plan, so you will at any time have to be ready to take onto your own wallet much higher costs than usual, even if you are paying cheaper monthly premiums.
How high is it? Should you choose to get a catastrophic health insurance plan, you’re going to be looking at deductibles of around $500, possibly even more than that. Besides that, if you get a catastrophic health insurance plan, there will usually be a lifetime maximum coverage of between two and three million, and if you should reach this maximum coverage point, then you will no longer be covered and your policy will be canceled.
If you do have a $500 deductible, you’re going to have to pay for everything up to and including five hundred dollars. Once your medical expenses go past that, your coverage starts. Even if you have a deductible as high as $15,000, and you have to get some kind of treatment that costs ten thousand, you will have to pay for it. Now you can see why even with its cheaper monthly cost, catastrophic health insurance can be more expensive than most other types of plans.
When major medical costs are spoken of as regarding catastrophic health insurance, pregnancy is not included. So if you’re thinking of getting catastrophic health insurance just because pregnancy is indeed major medical care and involves a hospital, don’t fool yourself.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.