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Posts Tagged ‘group health insurance’

With the advent of the internet, online shopping has grown from a minor interest to a multi-billion dollar segment of the market. Millions are now regularly shopping online, and the numbers are growing. With this large interest in purchasing online, it can only be assumed that more and more will be looking for health insurance quotes online too.

Searching for insurance online can provide many benefits. There are sites which will provide you with quotes from several companies so you can compare them with one another in one screen view. You will be able to select policy options, adding and deleting them at will, until you find the right feature combination that fits your needs best. The process is quick and easy and is helpful to those who lead busy lives.

There are however, some draw-backs to the process of purchasing your health insurance online, which one should definitely be aware of. First there are many sites that are just looking for your personal information to sell as leads to insurance agents, and yes, this means that once you go online to research health insurance you will begin to be contacted by insurance agents looking to sell policies. Now this is only a drawback if you have already purchased your insurance, however if you are still looking then this could actually be helpful. Also, you can not really be sure what you are getting online, so be sure to investigate a company thoroughly, especially if you have never heard of them before. Also, keep in mind that you need to make sure you are putting your information in on a secure website, look for the lock to be sure.

One of the big political tennis balls being bounced around Washington these days is the issue of health care coverage for Americans. After a while, listening to the debate gets tiresome and maybe a little irritating, but there seems to be an important factor being left out. Unmarried adults. We always hear about the need for families to have health insurance, especially when young children are involved, but we almost never hear of the twenty and thirty-something singles.

What if we started saying as part of the debate, “Young, working, single adults need to get individual health insurance today.” What would be the reaction? I’m not sure, but I do know that there are millions of people in this category who are new to the work force and are working jobs with less than stellar benefits. For most entry-level positions, individual health insurance is not part of the package. In cases where it is, the coverage may be minimal as a way of keep employer costs down. It’s not uncommon for the kid fresh out of college to take his first job and not have health insurance.

Quite often, young people in their twenties and thirties aren’t very concerned that they don’t have health coverage. After all, they are in the prime of their lives with minimal responsibilities and filled with optimism for the future. Their health is not a concern and they’re used to rebounding quickly after a routine cold or flu. Chronic disease or debilitating injuries don’t seem to be on their radar, as they consider those things usually to be reserved for older people.

Having medical insurance is no guarantee you won’t be overbilled. Many are finding inaccuracies in the bills they receive from hospitals and caregivers. The problem is less uncommon than one would think. It could be sloppiness or it could mean the right hand isn’t talking to the left hand. Hospital billing procedures often do leave a lot to be desired, since there are so many involved in the patient’s care. But errors do occur, and it is a good idea to do a line by line review of your hospital bill.

One young nurse recently had an eye opening experience as she was reviewing the bills from her husband’s recent hospital stay. It appears he had been scheduled to be released on a particular day, and that wasn’t communicated somehow, causing him to have to stay an extra day. There were excessive charges for administering medication 7 times per day when it was only prescribed 4 times per day. And then there was the charge for $875 for one item that she knew from her hospital work should have only been around $80. Clerical error. By the time she was finished, she had discovered nearly $7000 of incorrect charges.

So when you receive a hospital bill, it is a good idea to sit down and review it very carefully. If you have questions, sit down with your doctor instead of the hospital billing department. The billing department is clerical by nature, and they don’t always have an accurate history of the care that was actually provided. Make sure you ask questions.