Health Insurance and You!

John Smith (name changed) called us yesterday and needed to obtain health insurance for his family.  Unfortunately, Jane (John’s wife) is diabetic, which would disqualify her from most well branded health insurance carriers.  John’s family would be considered “split” – in that John and the children would qualify for health insurance, but Jane would not.

How did we help this family? First, we split the family into two separate applications – John and the children on one plan (as it happens, a plan from Aetna) and Jane on to an accident medical plan.

There are some who question the wisdom of this approach — because we could not find Jane a program where she would be fully covered. However, I believe it was absolutely the best decision under the circumstances. By creating two separate applications, we got John and the kids into the best plan they could possibly hope for.  As it relates to Jane – we really have only two meaningful choices – the first is to do nothing.  The second is to provide Jane protection for health expenses that may result from an accident and/or supplement it with discount programs. This type of coverage is usually inexpensive (under $30/month). The latter is what we chose to do.

Many others in Jane’s situation have taken a more expansive approach and signed up for guaranteed issue health insurance plans that cover more than an accident. We absolutely do not encourage such alternative approaches when a customer qualifies for major medical insurance and can afford it.  But when a customer does not, we believe it is a better choice to service the customer's need than give up.

The wonderful service counselors who form part of getinsured.com can provide each of you this service – at no cost.  We believe this guided approach is much better than looking at web pages with hundreds of health plans. We also believe it is better than talking to a local Life and auto broker who may just offer one health insurance plan or two and has no fundamental focus on health insurance.

This post is part of a series — where we will build a series of consumer tips for purchasing health insurance well.  Is there anything you would like to hear about? 

Chini Krishnan
www.getinsured.com
Founder and CEO