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Affordable Individual Health Insurance – How To Control Your Own Insurance Costs

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Affordable Individual Health Insurance – How To Control Your Own Insurance Costs

The need for affordable individual health insurance is becoming more prevalent because of the rising numbers of self-employed. Entrepreneurs are changing the l andscape. Home-based businesses are growing at a phenomenal pace. The enormous growth of small business has generated a greater dem and for individual health insurance. This is a first time experience for many of these new start-ups. Group health insurance is provided by the employer. The employee that is enrolled in the company group health insurance plan rarely examines the coverage or the cost. This changes dramatically when they are forced into purchasing their own individual plan.

COBRA (the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985) guarantees a continuance of coverage when you leave your employer. This coverage is made available for 18 months after you leave. You have a 60-day window after termination of employment to shop for your own individual health plan. This window of time is critical to the insurance shopping process. If you have any thought of leaving your employer then it is imperative that you investigate the availability of individual health insurance.

Individual health insurance is medically underwritten. That means that the insurance company will gather all applicable medical information on you and or your family to determine if they can offer you an individual plan. Pre-existing conditions are often eliminated and in some instances coverage can be denied.

Things to consider:

1. Health – Do not presume that you or any of your family is Insurable. There may be certain pre-existing conditions that are covered by some companies and excluded by others.

2. Self-Insuring – The higher deductible that you elect will decrease your premium dramatically. This is called self-insuring. Some companies have deductibles that go as high as thous ands.

3. Insurance Company – There are many reliable insurance companies in the health insurance industry use their quotes to compare coverage.

We have done the research so you don’t have to. Please see our recommended source for insurance quotes online.

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Affordable Health Insurance Plan – What Everyone Needs To Know About Individual Health Insurance

The discussion about health insurance will rarely cross your mind as long as you are employed. The group health insurance benefits that you have while you are employed are so easily taken for granted. There may come a time when a change or loss of employment may send you scrambling into the health insurance market place. You will have a lot of new decisions to make. You will have to educate yourself very quickly because there is only a 60-day window after separation from your employer to purchase a new plan.

There are an increasing numbers of baby boomers reaching their mid-fifties that are leaving their employers and starting businesses. This requires health insurance planning. An affordable health insurance plan is only possible when you begin to underst and the basics of health insurance.

Group health insurance is almost always a Major Medical plan. There is a lifetime maximum payout of benefits up to a million dollars in most plans. These plans have the typical in-patient and out patient care subject to a number of different deductibles. It is imperative that you underst and the major medical policy. You do not want to purchase supplemental health policies to replace a major–medical plan. Hospital Income policies are one type of supplemental health insurance. The hospital income policy pays the insured a dollar amount benefit for each day that you are hospitalized and not much else.

Your best way to make health insurance more affordable is by taking advantage of the premium reductions gained from taking higher deductibles. The next step is starting a health savings account to fund the deductible and any other unforeseen expense. The health savings account is tax deductible. Your accountant or tax advisor will give you more details.

Insurance is usually the best way to decrease your monthly bills when you want to save money. Please see our recommended source for insurance quotes online to get the cheapest rates possible. We have done the research so you don’t have to.

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Affordable Health Insurance…

Finding affordable health insurance is possible, there are many companies that will help you to find health insurance that will meet your requirements and stay within your budget. The fact is that many people simply do not know where to look for health insurance. Connecting with a company that is capable of hunting down health insurance providers can take the hassle out of buying health insurance. For individuals who do not want to use a company to locate affordable health insurance there is the Internet.

Thous ands of people in the United States simply go without health insurance because they think they cannot find affordable health insurance. This would explain why there are many individuals in the United States who choose to go without health insurance. Those who do not have health insurance will be less likely to visit a doctor. This means that a lot of times illness and other ailments are not diagnosed until they have developed.

There are numerous different things that will determine what your monthly health insurance will be. Your health insurance rates will change depending upon the kind of policy you have. For example, do you only need health insurance for yourself, or your entire family? The answer will have an impact on any quotes you receive. Are you young, or are you in your senior years? Most health insurance companies adjust your premium based upon your age. Are you self-employed, or are you receiving health insurance through your work? This will also affect the cost of your health insurance.

You never know when an accident might happen and you need a trip to hospital for stitches or a broken bone. These bills will add up quickly but if you have health insurance, you can get the help you need without the worry of receiving a huge bill. If you can’t afford to pay off your medical bills, your credit rating could even suffer. If you have health insurance, you can prevent these problems from ever happening and your credit will be protected for your financial future and your health.

Another way you can make sure that your insurance rates are lowered is to increase the amount of your health insurance deductible. High deductibles equal lower monthly premiums. Anyone that has existing health problems which require extensive medical treatment may find it necessary to have a higher monthly premium.

Simply by researching health insurance options online and spending just a couple of hours searching may well save you money every month. Get a variety of quotes from insurance companies which meet your health and budget needs and you will find affordable health insurance. You may also find that purchasing health insurance online can save you money.

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Affordable Family Health Insurance Quote – Things To Know

Whether you are seeking health insurance through your employer or on your own you will be offered a variety of plans. In order to make the proper decision about which plan is right for you it is important to know the basic characteristics of the most popular types of health insurance. After this it is wise to get many quotes on health insurance and compare them. This is a free way to compare plans and prices.

Fee for service

For many years the fee for service plan was very popular and widely used type of health insurance. The insured pays a monthly fee. A deductible is applied to the cost of the services. Some services related to healthy living or emergency services may be exempted from the deductible. Once the deductible has been met the insured and the insurance company share the cost of services. For most companies the split may be 80/20 or 70/30. The company pays eighty or seventy percent, the insured pays twenty or thirty percent. There will be a cap on the total amount of money the insurance company will pay in a lifetime.

Health Maintenance Organization (HMO)

HMOs have become increasingly more common in the last decade. Again, the insured pays a premium which makes him/her a member of the HMO. As a member of the group the member is entitled to visit any of the doctors who are part of the group. These doctors may all work together in an HMO facility or may work in individual clinics as part of a group of doctors under contract to the HMO. Members may have to pay what is called co-pay when they visit the doctor. No paperwork is necessary to validate the claims of an HMO member; however, members may wait longer for non-emergency appointments than they would with a fee for service insurance program. An HMO generally requires its members to have a primary care physician who then refers the member to a specialist if needed.

Preferred Provide Organizations (PPO)

The PPO, a blend of the fee for service model and the HMO model, is a fast growing sector of health insurance. As with an HMO there is a network of doctors from which the insured chooses his/her physician. This physician is responsible for designating the need for specialized care. A co-payment will be required when an office or hospital visit is made. There will also be a deductible and medical expenses will be divided at an agreed upon scale between the insured and the insurance company operating the PPO. A person may choose to use a doctor who is outside of the network. Expenses incurred for medical care outside the network will make the patient’s share higher.

Please collect as many quotes as possible in order to compare services and rates. This is a free way to learn a lot about all of your options.

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Affordable Car Insurance – It Is Out There!

Everyone wants affordable car insurance but nobody wants to pay the price. That may not have made much sense to you but the insurance buyer has to be better informed. There has to be some time spent on educating yourself enough to make intelligent decisions about your next insurance purchase. Too many folks avoid all responsibility when it comes to buying car insurance. You do not need an insurance course to underst and the fundamentals involved in rating car insurance. Look at the declarations page on you car insurance and you will find all that you need to know.

The Declarations Page

1. Policy Period – This is the specific time period that the policy is effective. Some car insurance policies have an annual renewal and others have a six month renewal. Do not shop for car insurance with a declarations page that shows that your policy period has expired. That could cause you to be placed into a sub-st andard carrier. Shop at least one month before your insurance is ready to expire.

2. Vehicles – Your vehicles will affect your physical damage rate. When shopping, make sure that you give the quoting company the vehicle identification number of all of your vehicles. This is usually on your declarations page.

3. Drivers in Household – Every resident relative with a driver’s license should be listed on the policy unless they have other insurance.

4. Liability Limits – These are the limits for bodily injury and property damage insurance. This is very important coverage and not a good place to cut costs if you are a property owner. This portion of your policy pays benefits to the party that you have may have injured in an auto accident. It also pays for the damage to their vehicle.

5. Physical Damage – This is your collision and comprehensive benefit that you see on your declarations page. This is coverage for your automobiles. Your deductible selection will raise or lower the rate.

These are some of the many policy benefits that you will find on your declarations page. Ask your insurance company about discounts and tort option. Learn all that you can and you can help make your car insurance more affordable.

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Universal Life Insurance

My introduction to the concept of life insurance came years ago before the Internet made it much easier to educate yourself on all of the intricacies and issues of selecting and buying insurance. As a new father, I read an article in one of the magazines about the importance of life insurance. Coming from a blue collar family, I had never really been exposed to this as a basic financial planning requirement.

At any rate, the article motivated me to check out the issue and I started in the yellow pages. For the youngsters, those are big, cumbersome books printed on yellow paper with all the phone numbers listed. Today I guess strong men still tear them in half, but back then they were an important resource. My search produced several companies I had heard of and I called three of them to get in touch with an agent.

Over the next few months I became somewhat knowledgeable on the ins and outs of life insurance. I learned about term and whole life, cash value, and even a then-new affordable option called universal life. Money, of course, was pretty tight at that time but the wife and I figured out an amount we could afford monthly and started the process of choosing a policy.

I was pretty new to sales myself, but one of the agents filled the bill of the classic professional insurance salesman. I still smile thinking about him. He had a pitch that was as polished as a classic automobile’s paint job. He was confident without being arrogant and it was quite evident he expected to sell us as large a policy as we could afford.

In the end, it came down to him with a whole life policy and another agent that offered both term and universal life insurance options. The older pro simply dismissed both as unworthy options for a young family. Cash value was his theme and he wanted us to buy a policy that would help pay for the new baby’s education when the time came. (Of course, back the, an education at a good college was an unbelievably huge financial burden of around $5,000 for all four years. When the time came, I think we spent that amount just on four years of pizza).

Since that time, I have learned about residual incentives and all the other insights to insurance sales. Back then, however, it was a struggle to dismiss the fatherly insistence of the Pro over the clear advantages presented by the younger agent. Finally, however, we settled on the more flexable universal policy. Well, when I called our whole life guy to let him know, he absolutely insisted on a meeting before he accepted my no.

It was impossible to not grant a final sit down so he came over and we spent an hour or so reviewing all the facts and information again. When he finally accepted that I wasn’t going to be swayed, he sighed in a very sad manner, pulled out a sheet of paper and slid it to me across the table. When I asked what it was, he explained that he almost never lost a sale but when anyone failed to follow his advice, he asked them to sign this letter. It allowed him, he said, to come back to any new widows and explain he had done his best to make sure they were provided for, but the fault was with me, not him.

To this day, when I encounter or think of a truly persistent salesman, I remember our insurance pro and smile.

Susman Insurance Agency

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