Deductible, Co-Pay, and Co-Insurance: What Do These Health Insurance Costs Actually Mean?
If you're shopping for a health insurance policy, or trying to actually use your policy to get medical care, cost is likely a primary concern. You need to know not just what the premiums for your policy cost, but also what you'll actually have to pay out-of-pocket if you want to use healthcare services. Reading the policy language is key to understanding what costs you can expect to incur -- but you need to understand exactly what all of the different terms mean that are used to describe the payments you could end up owing.
In particular, there are three key costs you need to understand: deductible, co-pay, and co-insurance. Here's what each of these terms could mean to you, as far as the out-of-pocket expenditures that you'll incur.
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Source: Fool.com