What is PPO medical health insurance?
Reader question:
What is PPO medical health insurance?
Jose
Great question.
PPO medical health insurance, also known as preferred provider organization, is one of the strictest forms of medical health insurance plans out there. The other options are the traditional indemnity health insurance plan, which is most flexible; the HMO health insurance plan, which is stricter but not very much; and the POS medical health insurance plan, which is a mixture of the two that ends up being somewhere in between. Standing by itself on a different part of the stage is the PPO medical health insurance plan, which has similarities to the other three, but is all its own.
The very good thing about PPO medical health insurance is that it is cheap. That is the thing that keeps the people it insures within its plan. The cheap premiums and decent co-payments convince people to stay within the network and continue receiving their health care insurance through the PPO medical health insurance plan.
The Good:
- The co-payments are very, very cheap. And I mean very. If you just go for a regular check up, you’re probably going to end up paying your doctor a co-payment of no more than ten little dollars.
- You don’t have to get a referral to go see a specialist. That isn’t an open ended invitation, though. In order to be covered by the policy when go to said specialist, he has to be a part of the PPO network.
The Bad:
- You can go outside of the network to see a different physician, but the coverage doesn’t extend quite as much, and you’ll have to pay for the visit at the time and then send in a health insurance claim to be reimbursed once you get the bill.
- If you do go outside the network, that’s where the deductible comes in. You’ll probably have to pay one, and it’s also true that if the physician that you visit costs more than the ones within the network, you won’t be reimbursed for the difference.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.
What does all that medical health insurance jargon mean?
Say you’re going to be traveling to a country where English isn’t the official language. If you want to be understood and to understand, and don’t want to be completely confused while you’re over there, the least you want to do is learn a few key phrases, right? You might not be able to become fluent in the language over night–that only comes with experience–but to a certain degree you can at least be able to get by and not be lost in a such a foreign place.
The same basic principle applies to medical health insurance. These medical health insurance policies often come full of crazy jargon that is not explained and that you don’t understand, and so it makes choosing a health insurance plan difficult because you don’t understand what it means. There are many kinds of medical health insurance, such as:
- FFS, which means indemnity fee for service.
- HMO, which means health maintenance organization
- POS, which means point of service
- PPO, which means preferred provider organization
All of these plans is very unique and individual, and you should consider all of its features before you make a decision on what kind of medical health insurance plan that you want. The last three are considered to be more managed, and the care for yourself and your family is more organized, although it is also more restrictive.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.