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.
Kinds of group health insurance
Reader question:
What kinds of group health insurance are there?
Richard
Great question.
There are four kinds of group health insurance, although the most popular ones these days are the HMO and the PPO. There have been a lot of changes in employment based medical insurance in recent years, and the employee has come out the winner, with more and more benefits as well as lower premiums and better options than ever before.
- Traditional group health insurance.
In 1988, the majority (74%) of group health insurance was provided in the traditional way. Well, things have changed quite a bit, and as of 2003 that number has dropped to only 5%. The best thing about traditional group health insurance is that it has room to move around in. You can pick any doctor you want, go to any hospital you want, and see a specialist without having to get a referral, among more things. The main reason that you don’t see traditional group health insurance around anymore is because this amount of freedom meant high costs, both for company and employee.
- HMO group health insurance.
HMO means Health Maintenance Organization. This was the first group health insurance type to offer an option other than the traditional kind. This is the cheapest group health insurance option, but only because it has so many limits. A network of doctors and hospitals is created so that you can choose from among that list, and can only go anywhere outside of it and still be covered is if you get a referral from a doctor on the list. If you go to a doctor or hospital not in the network, you’ll be paying out of pocket.
- PPO group health insurance.
PPO means Preferred Provider Organization. This is the most oft-used type of group health insurance these days. It’s similar to both traditional and HMO group health insurance, because you can go within a network or outside. If you go within the network, then you’ll get very low prices and most often won’t have to co-pay anything. If you go outside, you’re still covered, it will only cost more, but still less than if you had no coverage.
- POS group health insurance.
POS means Point of Service, and is also called an open-ended HMO. This is very similar to PPO because there is a network of doctors which the insured must visit and get referrals before going outside the network if they want to be fully covered. They can still go outside the network without referrals, but it will cost them more, though they will still be covered.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.