Insurance Tips: How To Get Half-Price Insurance
Posted: Friday, June 04, 2010
by Alston Balkcom
1800insuranceCT.com
Your cost for medical insurance will, to a large degree, be controlled by the amount of risk you are willing to take. This means that you will pay more for a small deductible health care insurance plan than you will pay for a bigger deductible medical care insurance plan. Your cost will be controlled by other insurance-related factors as well. These insurance-related factors include your location, your age, your gender and your medical history. However, the insurance-related factors you have the most control over may be the deductible you select when buying a medical care insurance policy.
For this reason a larger deductible health insurance plan is often a much better bargain when compared to a lower deductible plan. Raising your risk by a dollar often results in a cost-savings of greater than a dollar.
Chances are you can purchase a medical insurance plan very similar to the one you currently pay for with a higher deductible. If that is true, it will be easy to compare your choices.
To check to see if you can halve your cost without raising your risk too much, you can use this three-step process. First calculate the amount you will save each year with the higher deductible policy by subtracting the annual cost of your current medical insurance policy from the annual cost of the higher deductible policy. Then calculate how much additional risk will take on if you buy the bigger deductible contract. Finally deduct the potential savings from amount of the potential additional risk. Call this dollar amount your "net additional risk".
If you are comfortable with net additional risk the figure, consider purchasing the cheaper policy. But before you do so, do the same exercise again. This time compare your current policy with a contract with an even higher deductible medical care insurance policy.
Health care insurance policies that are compatible with HSAs or Health Savings Accounts are often excellent options. These plans typically have larger deductibles and low prices. They often will pay for some preventative health expenses even if you have yet to pay your deductible.
This money-saving idea should not only be used to cut down on your health care insurance costs. You should also apply the same process to reduce your rates for homeowners insurance and for your other personal insurance plans.
Increasing your deductible and cutting your insurance rates is a tried and true way to getting your costs lower. However, there are two things that you should take into consideration.
The first is that it is wise to hold on to the premiums that you save by lowering your costs. This can help you in two ways. If you have medical events that are not covered by your insurance policy, some of this money can be used to cover it. If you do not have uninsured costs, you might more money for retirement.
The second is that a deductible is not the only cost share for medical insurance. Often two policies with the same deductible might be very different. The other major cost shares are coinsurance and copays.
When comparing medical care insurance contracts, it pays to look at all the insurance-related factors involved. Do not focus on the deductibles and forget about the other insurance-related factors.
As the money we spend for insurance go higher, we have to get smarter and make better decisions. The steps above can help you lower your costs for insurance and increase your financial security. You will find more medical insurance tips as well as instant health insurance rates on Alston Balkcom's site.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)This is good advice - and written in layman's terms, so it's very readable. Thanks!
Health insurance will soon be a thing of the past.
High deductible plans work best for families with a financial cushion: liquid assets that can be tapped in case of a medical event. Those with less of a cushion can hedge their bets with supplemental insurance.
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