What is the Best Low-Cost Health Insurance?

Finding low cost health insurance is a key part of personal financial planning these days. Health care spending has become a major piece of a household budget for most families these days. With health care costs on the rise, the majority of personal bankruptcies cite unpaid medical bills as a contributing factor. Not having affordable health insurance can lead to financial disaster if something major comes along.

Many people today are finding it difficult to obtain low cost health insurance due to their medical history. Insurance companies are turning down more and more people all the time, or charging them so much that they can't afford it at all.

If you have dealt with things like high-blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, cancer, etc. (the list seems to go on and on) then you already know that it's very difficult to find affordable health insurance. For these people, there are some excellent limited benefit health insurance plans available. These affordable health insurance plans are guaranteed issue health plans with no medical questions asked. Everyone pays the same, male or female, no matter what your age. These plans pay the doctor or hospital a fixed amount for each service received. Having one of these types of plans is much better than having no health insurance at all.

How Can I Find Lower Premiums?

Traditional health insurance has a lot of moving parts that you can customize in order to make the premiums more affordable. Let's go through the major things that will affect your monthly premiums:

Co-Pay: Range from $15 - $60 for an office visit. Most things done in the doctors office should be covered by the co-pay. But if your doctor wants to perform a procedure or test and you're not sure if it's covered by the co-pay, please ask! You may need to call the insurance company with the procedure code to find out. Otherwise it may go towards your deductible, which means you pay out of pocket for it.

Deductible: Range from $500/person - $15,000/person. Things like hospitalization, surgeries & many test go towards your deductible. You pay out of pocket for these things until you've spent your deductible each year.

Coinsurance: This is a shared cost between you and the insurance company, and it comes into play once you've met your deductible. You can increase your share of the cost to lower your premiums. You will have a maximum amount that you will have to pay, so your risk is not unlimited.

Prescription Drug Deductible: This is a separate deductible that applies only to your prescriptions. They can range from $200/person - $1000/person. Having this, or increasing this will lower your premiums.