Figuring out Single Payer Insurance and Private Health Care

What is the best health insurance? This is question that many people just like you are asking themselves every day. How you answer that question really depends on what health insurance problems you want to solve. In other words, have you identified your specific insurance needs? It is important to understand that health insurance is not a discount off the price of health care. Insurance means risk management, and the monthly premium you pay is the price you pay the health insurer to take on the risk of your health care expense. One way of looking at this is that the company is making a bet that you will not need care. When the company pays the costs of your medical care, it has lost the bet, and you win in the sense that most of your expenses are paid.

Many people think that health insurance is a kind of price discount, but that is not true. Now that you know it is really a kind of risk management, you can see that there can be many kinds of plans to suit many different kinds of needs. If you have the money, you can even have an insurance company write a custom policy just for you. To keep costs down, health insurers offer set packages of benefits, and each package would include a slightly different menu of benefits. Normally, for many people, the term, health insurance plan, means something that pays for hospital and doctor care for either a single individual or for a family. Employer or union group health insurance is a policy offered through an employer or union to offer coverage for their employees. The kind of policy you choose, and the kinds of policies an employer makes available, depends on how much risk you want managed.

Some well-known health insurance company names that you might encounter when researching policies include, Assurant, Anthem, Blue Cross, Aetna, Cigna, Banker’s Life, Mutual of Omaha, United Health Care, Humana, Kaiser, and Tonik. This is really just the tip of the iceberg, and the point of listing these names is only to show you that there are many, many insurance companies all offering their own benefit packages and prices. When you choose a plan, you are choosing one health insurance company to be the payer on your health insurance costs. The way this works is that your doctor submits a bill (called a claim) to the insurance company for services provided, and the company reimburses the doctor an agreed upon rate. How much the insurer pays and how much you pay as your share of costs (deductibles and copayments) depends on the agreements set forth in the policy.

Single payer health insurance generally refers to a system where the government manages and pays on all insurance claims. In the United States, Medicare would be the closest example of a single payer insurance system that is managed by the Federal Government. However, the Medicare program currently allows private insurance companies to offer private, managed care policies (such as HMO and PPO plans) called Advantage Plans to manage Medicare benefits. Medicare beneficiaries are allowed to choose between Federal management of their health care benefits and private management in the form of a Medicare Advantage plan.

Now, the issue of which health insurance is best for you is answered in part by what specific health care needs are in question. There are many different kinds of policies, and the choices can be overwhelming. For example, there is disability insurance, accident and dismemberment insurance, temporary health plans, continuation of coverage insurance, hospital only insurance, catastrophic coverage, disease specific, long term care, supplemental, and fee for service and managed care polices.

Making a sound choice depends on a number of factors. You will need to make a list of your costs, needs, circumstances. For example, do you need medical care for only a limited period of time? If so, then a no frills temporary policy might work better for you than a more comprehensive, expensive plan. If you need coverage that will include all of your family, then you will probably look at a more comprehensive plan including both hospital and medical benefits. However, let’s say that you work in an environment where there is a realistic expectation of injury. In that case, you might consider catastrophic coverage, or possibly a dismemberment policy. When searching for health insurance, your understanding of your needs will be of primary importance in finding a policy that suits not only your needs but your budget.

What you get when you seek cheap health insurance quotes and what a low cost health insurance plan really means.

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