The Health Insurance Contract: What to Look for In It
Very few people find the task of reading through contracts inspiring. After all, most contracts tend to be written by lawyers in a language (called legalese) which only they understand, yet they expect the documents to be assimilated by members of the general public. Matter are not made any easier by the fact that the most important elements of the typical contract, the elements that can have the biggest impact to both parties in the contract tend to be hidden deep in the contract's fine print.
Yet failure to understand a health insurance contract can turn out to be a very big blunder, like when one is told that they will have to foot their medical bill for one obscure reason or another, with an even more obscure clause (in the health insurance contract they got themselves into) being quoted as the reason for their being denied coverage.
Whether or not you are comfortable with legalese, therefore, there are at least some three important things you have to ensure you are clear about before signing yourself into a health insurance contract, even if doing so means pushing yourself intellectually or even getting someone to interpret the legalese for you, as may be the case.
The first thing you need to be very clear about before signing onto a health insurance contract is the 'extent of coverage.' As it turns out, a health insurance policy - whatever its value - is never a panacea for all medical bills, and therefore every health insurance policy is bound to have limits with regard to the medical conditions it covers and the maximum amount of hospital bills it will pay for. The people offering health insurance are, in any case, business-minded people in most cases, and they simply cannot afford to cover everyone who signs up with them for everything. The worst thing that can befall you if you are not aware of the limits of your health insurance policy is to check into a health facility with a given condition, incur a hefty medical bill, only to be told that your condition (or amount of your hospital bill) is not covered by your health insurance - which in the worst case scenario could see you being detained at a health facility for non-payment!
Ensure too, before you sign onto your health insurance contract, that you know at what point in time the coverage in it takes effect. This will save you from a situation where you incur a medical bill a few weeks after taking the up the health insurance, only to be told that you have to pay the bill, as the cover had not yet taken effect when you incurred the bill!
And in the same spirit of knowing the major components of your health insurance contract, ensure too, that you are very clear about what health facilities the insurance covers bills in, and those that it doesn't. Most health insurance covers, as you will learn in the process, only pay for bills incurred in certain (select) healthcare facilities, while leaving it up to you to foot your healthcare bills if you happen to incur them at certain other facilities. - 23211
Yet failure to understand a health insurance contract can turn out to be a very big blunder, like when one is told that they will have to foot their medical bill for one obscure reason or another, with an even more obscure clause (in the health insurance contract they got themselves into) being quoted as the reason for their being denied coverage.
Whether or not you are comfortable with legalese, therefore, there are at least some three important things you have to ensure you are clear about before signing yourself into a health insurance contract, even if doing so means pushing yourself intellectually or even getting someone to interpret the legalese for you, as may be the case.
The first thing you need to be very clear about before signing onto a health insurance contract is the 'extent of coverage.' As it turns out, a health insurance policy - whatever its value - is never a panacea for all medical bills, and therefore every health insurance policy is bound to have limits with regard to the medical conditions it covers and the maximum amount of hospital bills it will pay for. The people offering health insurance are, in any case, business-minded people in most cases, and they simply cannot afford to cover everyone who signs up with them for everything. The worst thing that can befall you if you are not aware of the limits of your health insurance policy is to check into a health facility with a given condition, incur a hefty medical bill, only to be told that your condition (or amount of your hospital bill) is not covered by your health insurance - which in the worst case scenario could see you being detained at a health facility for non-payment!
Ensure too, before you sign onto your health insurance contract, that you know at what point in time the coverage in it takes effect. This will save you from a situation where you incur a medical bill a few weeks after taking the up the health insurance, only to be told that you have to pay the bill, as the cover had not yet taken effect when you incurred the bill!
And in the same spirit of knowing the major components of your health insurance contract, ensure too, that you are very clear about what health facilities the insurance covers bills in, and those that it doesn't. Most health insurance covers, as you will learn in the process, only pay for bills incurred in certain (select) healthcare facilities, while leaving it up to you to foot your healthcare bills if you happen to incur them at certain other facilities. - 23211
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Before you choose a health insurance plan, you should compare health insurance plans to the the one that has cheap health insurance plans.
posted by X - Men @ 1:06 AM
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