Getting health insurance in Houston if you’re high risk
Reader question:
I’m from Texas and I’m having a hard time finding health insurance in Houston because I’m considered ‘high risk’. What do I do?
Marvin
There’s always something that you can do.
The health insurance business, indeed, the entire insurance business, be it life, health, or auto, functions around formulas that determine the risk of a potential customer. Medical health insurance companies provide health coverage, but they only want to provide to the people who need it least, and want to make it as difficult as possible to use. This is natural to a business, as they would much prefer to have money coming in than out. This makes it difficult for people who are more like to use medical health insurance coverage to get insured, but there are certain fall back plans set in place to help them out.
If you are looking for medical health insurance in Houston, Texas, then you should consider getting involved with the Texas Health Insurance Risk Pool. This, which makes it easier to get high risk health insurance in Houston and the rest of the state, was created as Texas’s response to the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It helps out poeple who find that medical health insurance companies turn them down more often than not because they have a condition or history that makes it to where they require more health care.
It works pretty much the same way as much health insurance in Houston, even down, strangely, to the fact that in the first year of your policy you aren’t covered for any pre-existing conditions. It does, however, allow for hospital stays and trips to the emergency room with small deductibles.
It may be the only option for someone who needs health insurance in Houston and can’t get it anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean that it will be cheap. As a matter of fact, with a one thousand dollar deductible, it could end up with a monthly cost of up to five hundred for a 36 year old man, and up to six hundred for a woman of the same age.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
What you need to know about group health insurance
There are about five things about group health insurance that lots of employers don’t know but should. Providing group health insurance for your employees is a big deal, and you should educate yourself as much as you can about it. Most employees can agree that they want to get the cheapest group health insurance that they can, but also realize that they need to get quality group health insurance for their employees. If you’re sincere about this desire, it’s important to know as much as you can about group health insurance rates.
- Competition and law. There’s a lot of it going on in the state of Texas, especially in the Houston the health insurance business. It’s also regulated by the Texas Department of Insurance, which enforces the Insurance Code. Every year new laws make insurance policies even more complex than ever before and make it more expensive for companies to get group health insurance plans. The congress in your state has an effect on what you’re paying for group health insurance.
- Lying about rates. Group health insurance agents try to get more customers by lying and saying that they can get you cheaper health insurance rates. That’s not the case. Considering that group health insurance is regulated by the state, the prices are the same all across the board among agents.
- Agents don’t really know. Agents don’t know what insurance companies’ rates will actually be, they can only guess. It will depend, in the end, on the company and on each employee employed by it and their medical condition. If you have a company with as few as 50 employees, you can get rates from an agent that up to 67% off from what you’re going to get from the actual insurance company.
- Bribes. Getting some gifts for giving your business to a group health insurance agent may seem like it’s okay and many might not realize what it really is. Exchange of cash or gifts can make the group health insurance agent lose his or her license and is against the law.
- Knowledge. Just because group health insurance agents can’t know for sure how much a certain insurance company is going to charge, they can still help your company save up to hundreds of thousands of dollars on group health insurance costs. Things like programs that help employees maintain themselves in good health can contribute to these huge savings.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.