Purchase Medical Insurance Not a Rip-Off
To keep from getting scammed when you purchase health insurance make sure that you buy from Levitra a company that is approved by your state’s insurance department, that has few complaints, is financially stable and that has will sell you a good policy.
The first and most important thing you should do before purchasing any medical insurance is to check with your state’s insurance department to be sure that the company is approved to sell in your state.
Each department of insurance will have different standards. For that reason, you cannot stop with this step. However, you will eliminate the worst carriers from consideration by limiting the companies you consider to companies that have been approved by your state’s insurance department.
The ratio of complaints a company receives to the number of policy holders is important. Your state’s insurance department should be able to help you here.
To be sure that your insurance department’s standards are good enough, you may want to visit the AM Best website to see how financially strong an insurance company is. You can visit their website and get free report that includes not only AM Best’s opinion of an insurance carrier’s current financial stability but also Best’s opinion of of a health insurance company’s future financial stability.
Ascertaining how strong an insurance plan is can be more difficult than establisihing how strong the company is. One of the reasons this is difficult is that insurance carriers sometimes sell both top notch plans and not so good ones. Another is the fact the insurance contracts are inherently complicated.
The percentage of plan holders who complain is a good indication of how strong the insurance carrier’s policies are. While some complaints are baseless, a carrier that has too many complaints is a company that either doesn’t live up to their promises or that offers plans that don’t meet their policy holder’s expectations.
However, since carriers that have a low level of complaints may sell both good and not so good contracts, each policy will need to be looked at independently. Things to stay away from are plans with low lifetime limits, annual limitations on benefits and limited benefits in the physician’s office.
A plan’s lifetime limit should be several million as a minimum unless you are certain you will be switching to another policy soon. If you are close to being eligible for Medicare a policy with a two or three million dollar limit won’t have much time to be ravaged by inflation. If you are younger, a million dollar limit may not be enough when you are in your forties or fifties.
Some plans have generous lifetime caps, but limit what they will pay in a year. These plans should be avoided. They won’t pay all medical bills if you have a major accident or illness.
Policies that pay in the hospital only are also to be avoided. If you have significant expenses in the hospital you are almost sure to also have some very substantial doctor expenses either before or after your hospital stay. You may experience both.
To avoid being ripped off when you buy health care insurance buying from carriers that pay their claims is important. Of equal importance is getting a policy that meets certain standards. You will need to understand which plans limit their benefits and avoid them if you want to keep from getting ripped off.
Author Bio: You can get rates, info and buy health insurance from the author, Alston Balkcom’s website. He blogs frequently. His latest posts include: having a baby with no insurance
Category: Advice
Keywords: health insurance,buy health insurance,health care insurance,insurance department,insurance scams