by Healthcare Blue Book

For some patients, obtaining affordable healthcare coverage can be challenging. However, there are a wide variety of policy designs, such as high deductible plans or plans that couple a high deductible with a Health Savings Account (HSA) that can help make coverage more affordable to consumers. For many consumers, there may be individual and family policies that are remarkably inexpensive to obtain (compared to the national employer policy expense averages).

We encourage all consumers to learn more about coverage types, and to explore their options through the following resources:

eHealthInsurance (www.eHealthInsurance.com) - eHealthInsurance is the largest online health insurance broker and offers a number of resources, including a Buyers Guide that will help consumers assess their needs, understand different policy types and get competitive quotes from multiple insurance companies. Most importantly, eHealthInsurance does not charge consumers a fee to use their services.

The Healthcare Blue Book has partnered with eHealthInsurance.com to provide a fast, easy and economical way for our customers to get insurance quotes from many carriers. As with all Healthcare Blue Book partners, eHealthInsurance meets our stringent criteria for value, customer service and satisfaction. eHealthInsurance can assist consumers in all 50 states and can shop insurance at over 180 different health insurance companies to make sure you find the best rate. eHealthInsurance offers health insurance for individuals, families and small businesses. They have successfully found health insurance for over 2 million people.

The Foundation for Health Coverage Education (www.coverageforall.org) - The Foundation for Health Coverage Education is a non-profit resource that provides general education resources to help the uninsured learn about and seek health coverage, as well as providing an excellent list of links to state and local resources and other programs to assist the uninsured.

Why should I have health insurance?

There are sound financial reasons to encourage all consumers to have some level of health insurance coverage, if possible. The most important reasons to obtain coverage include:

Care is generally more expensive for the uninsured. While having access to the discounted fees offered by an insurance carrier’s network does not guarantee a lower or even a fair price for care, insurers do generally have access to lower fees through their negotiated provider discounts. These discounts may be 50% to 80% less than what the provider would bill a cash paying patient.

Not all situations afford the patient time to shop. The Healthcare Blue Book can help uninsured patients understand the fair price for treatment, and obtain care for the same price an insurer would pay. However, in some instances patients experience emergency care needs that do not allow the patient time to shop for care. Unfortunately, this type of care can result in extremely high medical bills that are often two, three or four times what an insurer would have paid for the same care. An insurance policy can help protect consumers in these rare, but financially risky situations.

Catastrophic or complex events can be extremely expensive. Unfortunately, people do sometimes develop serious conditions, such as cancer or chronic disease, which can be very expensive to treat. Aside from the benefit of offering the patient access to treatment options, an insurance policy provides financial protection.

Obtaining coverage when you really need it may be more difficult. You may be healthy now, but if you are uninsured and diagnosed with a serious medical condition, you could find that you don’t qualify for coverage when you need it. It is advisable to purchase an insurance policy from a reputable company when you are healthy. This will let you have the best insurance options, the best pricing and the safety of having coverage when you need it.