Individual Health Insurance Policies Can Be Affordable
A recent study undertaken by online health insurance marketplace ehealthinsurance.com found that individual health insurance can indeed be affordable if you shop around.
Specifically, the study of more than 225,000 individual and family health plans purchased through their site found that the average monthly premium to insure an individual was $158, and more than half of those underlying policies had a monthly premium of less than $130! When insuring a family, the average monthly premium was $366 with more than half paying less than $300 per month.
To build on a previous health insurance study that was blogged about here, women paid more for their health insurance coverage, 18% more to be exact. On average women paid $171 per month while men paid $145 on average.
Other findings:
- 60% of children’s health plans had monthly premiums of less than $100. These do not include state sponsored and subsidized children’s health plans which have income limits for qualification.
- Regionally the Midwest was the cheapest region with average monthly premiums of $130, followed by the West region ($150), South ($154), and Northeast ($239)
- Average monthly premium for HSA health plans was $133
