Understanding Insurance Terms

Purchasing medical health insurance is difficult for a first time buyer as well as one who has purchased medical health insurance in the past. The rules of the game continuously change and sometimes it can be very difficult to keep up with all the changes. After all, you do have a life to live and probably a family to take care of. Giving yourself the time to become familiar with all the necessary terms will help you to gain a more complete perspective of what to research.

Next to inquiring how much the annual health insurance premium will cost, deductible is usually the next question to rise to the surface. The deductible is in most cases the amount of money the insured is responsible to pay out of pocket before the insurance provider put forth the percentage payments. When you agree to an affordable health insurance policy with a deductible of three thousand dollars, you the insured are responsible

It is your responsibility to pay out of pocket for all and any medical physician visits and or hospital stays until you reach the deductible amount agreed. It is at this point that your medical health care insurer will begin to pay into your plan based on the agreed percentage. Co-insurance is the responsibility of the insured based on a percentage split that varies depending upon what the original agreement was, similar to the out of pocket expense.

Either co-payments on the other hand are a flat, consistent fee or in some cases, it is a small percentage of the health insurance cost that must be paid up front at the time of service. The pre-existing conditions and the traditional waiting period usually work together in both time and usage. Preconditions usually have a waiting period of between twelve months and eighteen months before the insurance provider agrees to begin paying for medical treatment.

The waiting period with all insurance policies including the individual health insurance is the time allotted, which is dictated by the insured. This relates to how long an individual must wait for coverage of any kind to begin. The section of the medical health insurance policy where many of the insured have a problem is with the lifetime maximum which in a sense is a cap of how much medical coverage a given insurer will allow over a person’s lifetime.

Most individuals do not give much thought and consideration into the lifetime maximum until they are diagnosed with a catastrophic disease that will take the entire insurance policy and then some.