Coverage of Your Health Insurance
Written by Fiona Gu   


Your health insurance can cover anything from serious illness to normal doctor visits. The following is a list of typical health insurance coverage.
  1. Prescription Drugs - These are drugs that are necessary and require prescriptions in order to treat an illness or disease. Unnecessary prescription drugs, such as nicotine chewing gum, are not covered.
     
  2. Preventive Care - This includes vaccines, routine health checkup's, and similar services to keep you from developing more serious illness.
     
  3. Mental Health Benefits - This typically covers preventions, diagnostics, and treatments on mental health illness.
     
  4. Maternity Care and Prenatal Care - This covers women going through the pregnancy and childbirth process.
     
  5. Vision Care - Most of the insurance plans would cover eye injury or disease services. Routine eye examinations and corrective lenses are usually not covered.
     
  6. Dental Coverage - For some insurance plans, this is included, however for others; this may be a separate plan. This also has direct reimbursement when your employer agrees to pay for a certain portion of your dental costs.

Group Coverage vs. Individual Coverage

Instead of buying an individual health insurance just for yourself, you can be healthily insured as part of a group. This is group insurance. Group insurance usually has more coverage and lower cost. It is much preferred than individual coverage. The advantage is that, as part of a group, the risk to the health insurance company is spread over the group. Normally, this means that you pay less than what you would pay for individual health insurance. Group insurance plans, which provide coverage for two or more individuals, cannot single out high-risk individuals; nor can they deny them health coverage. All individuals are covered regardless of their existing health problems, and high-risk individuals are factored into the total cost of the group plan.

Group health insurance policies are often subject to different rules. Even for very tiny groups, it is more competitive and offers lower prices than individual health insurance policies. So, it's well worth it to find a group - whether it is through an alumni association, a trade association or through a professional association.

Tip: You should carefully examine the information on in-network and out-of-network coverage and responsibilities. The information is likely to change between different companies.

Note: Sometimes your employer would make the decisions for you. However, you should still read over the policy yourself to understand the coverage and determine if you need additional health insurance.




Last Updated on Sunday, 26 December 2010 20:55