To avoid being scammed when you buy health care insurance be sure that you buy from a carrier that is accepted by your state's insurance department, that has few complaints, is financially strong and that has will sell you a good plan.
The first and most important thing you should do before purchasing any health care insurance is to check with your state's insurance department to be sure that the company is accepted to sell in your state.
Each department of insurance will have different standards. You cannot stop with this step because of this. However, you will eliminate the worst companies from consideration by restricting the carriers you consider to companies that have been approved by your state's department of insurance.
The ratio of complaints a company receives to the number of in force policies is important. Your state's insurance department should be able to help you gather this data.
To be sure that your department of insurance's standards are high enough, you may want to look them up with AM Best to see how financially stable 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 their future financial stability.
Ascertaining how good an insurance contract is can be more difficult than figuring out how strong the carrier is. One of the reasons this is difficult is that insurance companies sometimes sell both top notch contracts and lousy ones. Another is the fact the insurance policies are inherently complicated.
The percentage of policy holders who complain is a good indication of how good the insurance carrier's contracts 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 policies that don't meet their contract holder's expectations.
However, since companies that have a low level of complaints may sell both good and lousy plans, each contract will need to be looked at separately. Things to stay away from are policies with low lifetime limits, annual caps on benefits and limited benefits in the doctor's office.
A contract'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 plan with a two million dollar limitation won't have much time to be ravaged by inflation. If you are in your twenties now, a million dollar limit may not be enough when you older.
Some plans have high lifetime limitations, but limit what they will pay in a 12 month period. These plans should be avoided. They won't pay all of your medical bills if you have a major accident or illness.
Policies that pay in the hospital only are not recommended either. If you have big costs in the hospital you are almost guaranteed to also have some very large physician bills either before or after your hospital stay. You may have a need for multiple physician visits both before and after a hospital stay.
To avoid being scammed when you purchase health care insurance buying from companies that pay their claims is important. Just as importance is buying a plan that meets certain standards. You will need to understand which policies limit their benefits and stay away from them if you want to avoid being scammed.
