4 Things You Must Know About Your Health Insurance Plan
The health insurance plan you choose will have an enormous impact on both your medical future and your financial future. Healthcare expenses are so high these days that few people can afford them without the help of insurance, but insurance policies themselves aren't exactly cheap. Understanding how your available health insurance plans work means you'll be able to choose the best one for your specific needs.
All health insurance plans charge a monthly premium (although if you're really lucky, your employer will pay it for you). However, the premium is far from the only expense you'll have related to your health insurance or medical care. First, nearly all health insurance policies have a deductible: the amount of medical expenses you'll have to pay yourself before your insurance policy will start helping out. Second, health insurance policies have co-pays for most expenses. A co-pay is the part of the expense you'll have to pay yourself even after you met your deductible for the year and may be expressed as a dollar amount or as a percentage of the expense. In some cases, a plan with a high monthly premium but low co-pays on the services you use most often will work out to be cheaper for you in the long run. Review the plan's summary to see what the co-pays are for various treatments, especially the ones you're likely to be using during the next year.
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Source: Fool.com
