Health Insurance and You!

In these tough financial times, it is important that Americans have the ability to discern and identify the types of insurance that bring actual benefit to themselves and their families. On Yahoo Finance yesterday, Investopedia published an article on the “15 Insurance Policies You Don’t Need.” The article offers detailed and practical guidance to saving money, but notice that health insurance is not on the list of policies.

If you have any of these policies, you should analyze whether the likelihood or magnitude of their protection are worth the amounts in insurance premiums that you pay each month. Also, quality health and life insurance policies may make some of the above policies redundant (i.e., there is no need to have both). For example, many mortgage life and accidental-death insurance issues are regularly covered under good term-life insurance policies, and having a good health insurance plan will preclude the need to enroll in a disease insurance policy.

Again, notice that health insurance is not on the list of policies to avoid. This is because health insurance is necessary given today’s medical costs. Without health insurance, a serious injury or disease could lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Every year, more than half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of high medical expenses.