Living Healthy with Health Insurance Benefits
Health insurance benefits can be almost as important to your life as food and water. This may sound a bit extreme, but if you get a serious illness or have a bad injury, getting quality care can be extremely difficult without insurance. But it’s often that very care which determines the extent of your recovery. You see the sad stories every day on television discussing people who died early or were unable to get proper treatments, because they had inadequate health insurance.
You have most of the responsibility for living healthy. You have to eat right and exercise. But health problems can rear their ugly heads with no warning, and the health insurance benefits you have chosen will determine how easily you can get coverage and how much coverage you can expect. It can be devastating to get an illness such as cancer and then find out that the treatments you need are excluded or that insurance only pays a small percentage.
Choosing the Choices
Even if you already have health insurance, you need to review your benefits and make sure they meet your needs. People too often get health insurance and then assume the coverage will adapt to their needs, but that’s not true. For example, if you reach a certain age or get married, the kind of coverage you have may need to be updated to reflect life changes. In addition, you might want to add health insurance benefits now that you didn’t need earlier, such as long term nursing care of well-baby care.
Many policies are comprehensive and have a full range of health insurance benefits that cover possible needed medical services from cradle to grave. But with most policies you have to decide how many benefits you want and what you’re willing to pay for coverage. Even with group plans at work, you can often choose among various policies that provide different levels of coverage.
Comparing the Comparisons
When you are ready to shop for health insurance benefits, the first thing you must confront is a table of plans that compare coverages. You have to know how to compare the comparisons, so to speak. For example, you know you want inpatient hospital services, but how much does each plan pay for a one day stay? You certainly want prescription drug coverage, but you need to know what kinds of drugs are covered and how much you will have to pay out of your own pocket?
Seeing Clearly
It can be confusing shopping for health insurance benefits, but making the right choices after comparing plans is important. There are so many different kinds of covered medical services to consider. Of course, there are the traditional services such as surgery, doctor office visits and maternity care. But you have to ask yourself if you need services such as mental health care, physical therapy, hospice care or dental care. Normally, the more comprehensive the plan is that you choose, the higher the cost. On the other hand, if your employer offers group insurance, you still need to determine if you should purchase a secondary plan to make up coverage deficits.
Before you decide which health insurance benefits you want, make sure you clearly understand all your options. That’s the only way you won’t be unpleasantly surprised when you have to use your insurance. Hodges & Company Insurance are experts on health insurance, contact us to help tailor a benefits plan to meet your needs, 713.993.9710 or 1.866.993.9710.
