Affordable Health Insurance Plans

Health Insurance costs have gone through the roof in recent years, but finding an affordable health insurance plan may not be as hard as you think. Here are simple explanations of the four basic plans and you can save money on them.

Health Insurance Plans

There are four basic types of health insurance:

1. Indemnity - This is the most expensive plan. It allows you to choose your own doctor and hospital. It's the most flexible plan because it allows you to make your own decisions about your health care. You pay your bill after services are rendered and are then reimbursed by your insurance company.

2. Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) - This is the cheapest plan. It provides you with a network of doctors and hospitals chosen by your insurance company. You pay a monthly fee for this plan and all visits and prescriptions must be approved by your HMO.

3. Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) - This is the most popular plan. It's similar to an HMO, but you pay for medical care after it's received instead of paying a monthly fee. You also have the option of seeing out-of-network doctors. Visits within the network require a small fee, while out-of-network visits may require a deductible payment and a co-payment.

4. Point of Service (POS) Plan - This is more expensive than HMOs and PPOs but much cheaper than an idemnity plan. It's for people who want to have the option of choosing their own doctor and hospital or staying with a network doctor and hospital.

Choosing an Affordable Health Insurance Plan

The first thing you have to do is to figure out which health insurance plan is best for you.

If you want the most flexibility, then a POS plan is your best bet. If you want the cheapest plan and don't don't mind your doctors being chosen for you, then an HMO is what your looking for. If you want more freedom of choice than an HMO and are willing to pay a little more for your insurance, then a PPO is a good choice. And if you're a senior and want to supplement your Medicare insurance, then a Medicare supplement is what you need.

After you choose a plan, the best way to find the best rate is to go to an insurance comparison website where you can compare rates from a number of different companies. The better sites even have a chat feature where you can talk online with an insurance expert and get answers to your questions. (See link below.)

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Insurance And Ethics

Insurance contracts are often seen as a form of gambling. That is because they appear as a type of wager that takes place over the lifetime of the policy. Basically the insurance company is willing to bet that you and your property will not suffer the loss insured against. In exchange for making this bet, and taking on the risk, the receive your premium. If they win the bet, they keep the premium, if they lose, they make the payout. In this sense, they are often compared to a type of long term financial casino.

The difference between your premium amount, and the amount the insurance company will have to pay out if the loss occurs, is simply the odds the insurance company is getting for taking on the bet. It's just like going to the horse races and betting on a horse that pays out 10 to 1.

This view of insurance has led to a number of people and religious communities disapproving of insurance because of its similarities to gambling. Among those groups that avoid insurance are the Amish and Muslim communities. What these people do instead is create a system of what is known as social insurance. What this means is that if there is a disaster and someone suffers a heavy loss, then the whole community will step forward and help them to deal with their loss and rebuild. While this system is very simple, it has the potential to be just as effective a safety net as insurance. However, it requires that the community actually does step forward and help those who suffer from disasters. This means that it is more successful in small closed and closely knit communities than in large modern societies.

Social insurance systems therefore are not always effective. Often the community that is supposed to adopt it is not suitable. Also, in very large disasters the system can break down as a small community will not be able to rebuild itself completely without outside assistance. This is why larger modern insurance systems can be more robust. However, in extremely large disasters, modern insurance systems can also run into difficulties. This is witnessed by the fact that it is impossible to insure against certain risks such as floods and earthquakes. This is because the damage would be simply on too large a scale for the insurance companies to cope with.

There are other ways in which insurance doesn?t follow the gambling model. For instance insurance companies seek to reduce the risk of the loss occurring constantly, for instance by requiring the installation of fire alarms, or by reducing the loss if the insured against event does occur, for example by providing rehabilitation to accident victims. Therefore insurance is like a gamble in the reward and risk elements, but other elements are different.

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