Buying Insurance

Lesson 6: Health Insurance

Solving Some Health Insurance Problems

What about those who for various reasons have lost their health insurance? If yours is a short term need, to cover you or your family because you are between jobs, or to cover a college graduate until he or she finds employment, then a short-term health policy might be the answer. These are typically issued in increments from 30 to 180 days. Generally they require few medical questions to be answered. The chief disadvantage to short-term health insurance is that when the policy expires coverage ends and it is generally not renewable. If you are in reasonably good health, but have a chronic or ongoing condition, you may be able to secure personal health insurance with an exclusion for the "preexisting condition". Why, you ask, would you want to buy health insurance that excludes the one thing for which you need health insurance? The answer is that that will probably not be the only thing for which you will need health insurance. For example, though the policy will not cover diabetes, it can be of enormous help if you have a heart attack. But what if you are truly "uninsurable" and have been turned down time after time for health insurance? Most states have a guaranteed health insurance program. The details vary among the states, but in general these laws and plans were enacted to provide a safety net for those who simply cannot secure health insurance in the private market. The cost will be high and the benefits may be restricted but at least it makes health insurance available to those without other alternatives. Additional health insurance problems and some solutions are dealt with in Hungelmann, pp. 253-62.

  1  2  3  4  5  6