Cheap Medical Insurance For The Uninsured

If you don’t work for a large company, or if you aren’t below the poverty level, chances are good that you don’t have adequate medical coverage, if you have any at all. This is an endemic problem in modern America, and it doesn’t look like the issue’s going away anytime soon. So what can you do? What if you’re diagnosed with diabetes in the next few days – what, short of quitting the job you have and becoming poverty-stricken, can you do to insure yourself? There are a few things. First, stay healthy. Eat right, exercise, don’t abuse your body with alcohol or cigarettes, and have safe sex. This isn’t the kind of insurance you buy, but taking care of yourself is self-insurance for your body. Second, look for a good insurance company that will insure you for a reasonable rate. They exist. Finding Medical Insurance Finding medical insurance isn’t too hard; most insurance companies that cover large corporations and groups with group health will also cover individuals, if you pay them enough. For this, let your fingers do the walking; look up Insurance - Health in the Yellow Pages and start calling agents. Ask for quotes from multiple companies, and ask more than one agent. You’ll get a lot of different answers, so make sure you take excellent notes. But here’s where you’re going to find the problem with medical insurance: without getting group rates and without an employer to foot part of the bill, medical insurance costs are staggering. But you have options. High Deductible Medical Insurance For medical insurance to be affordable to ordinary people when not filtered through organizations, it’s necessary to offer high-deductible medical insurance. This is insurance where the company offers copays and prescription coverage – but only after you’ve paid a certain amount of medical costs out of pocket. Most of an insurance company’s costs come down in that low sector; from people whose medical costs are two thousand dollars a year or less, yet who pay only a couple hundred dollars of that; if you do the math, insurance companies don’t charge too much beyond that to cover catastrophic health issues, like surgeries, accidents, or acute diseases. If you’re willing to take a thousand-dollar deductible, you can find affordable medical insurance. Medical Insurance Savings Account Now for that

thousand dollars or so deductible: because of some new government regulations, you can participate in what millions of insured people have for years: a flex plan. This is a special savings account, usually administered by an employer, whereby a certain dollar amount of someone’s paycheck is earmarked for medical expenses. This is removed from income pre-tax, and remains untaxed; it can save you a few hundred dollars a year. Now you can open up a medical insurance savings account, putting a little money in it every month (tax-free), and drawing on it when you really need money to cover un-covered medical bills. Think of it as a way to insure yourself against not-so-catastrophic illnesses.