You may be spending unnecessary dollars every year on your medical care coverage policy. You might be able to use certain tricks and get a lower insurance premiums. Combining your family s insurance coverage and a getting one policy may be the most cost effective approach. However frequently families will do better with two or more separate policies.
The circumstances in when buying separate individual health and accident coverage plans might be more cost effective include when you need to insure:
A adult and a kid
A family needing pregnancy coverage
An adult or adults over 49 needing coverage for a child
Families where the wife or husband is older by ten years or more
Usually when something seems almost the same as another thing yet costs much less, it is a strong indication that the value or quality is different. This is usually true with accident and health coverage, however in many cases it is not. Sometimes the difference in price says more about the way the insurance carrier calculates their rates than it does about the quality of the coverage.
Getting different medical coverage policies does have a potential downside. In some plans there are limitations on deductibles and other cost shares when family members are insured on the same plan. These down sides need to be weighed against any premium savings you get by placing your family members on separate plans.
The reason that buying separate or individual medical policies is a cheaper strategy for certain families is that medical care insurance carrier compute their prices using different methods. This means that certain families will get a better premium with certain calculation methods.
Some insurers will calculate the premium for each family member and just add those prices together to determine the premiums for a family. Other times a company will calculate the cost based on the age of the younger spouse. Other insurers will determine the rate based on the age of the older spouse.
If carriers determine premiums for their health care policies based on the age of the older adult and the number of people to be insured, buying healthcare insurance for one child and a adult can mean that you pay the same rate for the child as one would pay for an adult. The only way to pay the lower child rate for the child is to get him or her a separate medical care coverage policy. A family like this may pay less buying separate insurance policies or by buying a policy where the prices are determined for each member of the family separately.
Families that want pregnancy coverage will often save money by covering the future mother to be by herself. Many of the health insurance plans that include pregnancy benefits will include other benefits that other family members will not need.
Parents in their fifties and sixties who have kids often pay more when they cover their entire family on the same policy.
Some insurance companies will determine a rate based on the older spouse s age. Some companies compute their prices based on the age of the younger spouse. Shop around if there s ten years or more between the age or you and your spouse.
Large families usually save money by buying one plan and with a carrier that offers a family rate. Carriers that calculate their premiums by adding together the prices for each family member together can cost them too much.
It is important that you shop around when searching for health insurance. Different company use different methods of calculating prices. You may be pleasantly surprised at the price you find when you look at other medical coverage company s rates.
Author Resource:
Alston J. Balkcom can has been an insurance agent since 1985.