Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Individual Health Insurance Plans - Three Tips to Make Medical Care More Affordable

Individual health insurance plans are becoming more of a luxury for many people these days because it's just so expensive to buy a private plan. It's even becoming more difficult for a lot of individuals to buy health insurance through their employers because many companies have been forced to drop the benefits because of the expense. So what does a person do when their health insurance costs are sky high? Let's take a look at a few options.

#1. The first option would be to buy a "stripped down" policy. This means that you would have the bare minimums as far as coverage. This isn't the safest way to go in the event of long term hospitalization, however, the odds are in your favor that this won't happen. Yes, it's risky, but at least you'd have health insurance.

#2. Buy a policy with the maximum deductible. I realize that if you have a policy with a $2,500-5,000 deductible that you'll be paying for all of your basic health care out of your own pocket, however, if you consider that the average person does not get sick enough to actually see a doctor more than once or twice per year then this makes complete sense. Let's say that you had to go to the doctor twice in a year. Your office visit costs you $75 and your prescriptions cost another $50. That's $125.00 x 2 = $250.00 per year. That comes out to $20.83 per month and I can almost guarantee you that you'll be saving more than that by raising your deductible. Actually, even if your deductible was only $250.00 per year you'd still have to pay that out of your pocket. Your main goal is to keep from ruining yourself financially in the event that you end up with a very expensive hospital stay.

#3. This will probably be the most difficult option for you to consider, and I understand completely. Cutting back on all of your "extras". Now I don't mean to stop living, but if you really think about it I'm sure you could squeeze $50-$100 a month extra toward an individual health insurance plan if you REALLY wanted to. This might mean stepping down one package on your cable tv, staying home one weekend that you would have gone out, buying "Brand B" a few more times at the grocery store, stepping down from those Levi 501's. Doing this can be very difficult and I understand completely, but I'd almost bet you can come up with what you need and probably have money to spare.

Summary

Yes, individual health insurance plans are more expensive than ever and yes it is a struggle for a lot of folks to make it paycheck to paycheck, but now you know that if there's a will, there's a way and that having some type of individual health insurance coverage is absolutely better than none at all.

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