Health Insurance Blog

SmartSense® health plans are a portfolio of affordable health plans for individuals offered by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Monthly premiums for SmartSense can be less than $50 per month for an individual (single Male in Ohio, age 27)  if a high deductible ($10,000) is selected.  If a $2,500 deductible is chosen the monthly rate would be just over $60/mo.

Some of the highlights of SmartSense® include:

• A wide range of deductibles to choose from
• Access to a large network of doctors and hospitals
• No referrals or paper work needed
• Prescription drug benefits
• Online health support
• One of the most trusted names in health insurance

Just an example of high quality and affordable health insurance that can be found if you take a few minutes to shop around.  You can compare health insurance quotes right here at healthinsurancesort.com in less than 5 minutes.

Given the increased attention to rising health insurance rates and the growing number of uninsured in this country, we periodically scour the web for low-cost health insurance plans from quality health insurance companies across the country and blog about one here.

Blue Options HSA is a low cost health plan for North Carolina residents offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC).  BlueOptions HSA is a high deductible health plan that is eligible to combine with an HSA.

According to BCBSNC, monthly premiums are as much as 50% lower than a traditional health plan.  Rates can be less than $60 per month for a 25 year old male.  Other affordable health insurance plans offered by BCBSNC include Blue Advantage.

More information about North Carolina health insurance.

BlueEdge is a high-deductible health plan offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBSIL) that can be combined to form an HSA. There are also BlueEdge plan options for employer groups that work in conjunction with health reimbursement arrangements.

BlueEdge also includes coverage for both preventative & wellness benefits.

Health savings accounts are effective ways to keep monthly premiums down, especially for individuals or families that are relatively healthy.

Health insurance rates for BlueEdge can be as low as $75/mo or for BlueChoice PPO as low as $58/mo.

More information about Illinois health insurance.

State Farm Health Insurance understands the variety of needs their customers have.  They have a marketing relationship with Time Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, (Assurance Health), which enables them to assist each individual.  This information was obtained from State Farm’s health insurance web page.

State Farm is offering individual medical insurance coverage, short term medical coverage and student select coverage.  They also have a high deductible health plan which can be used with a health savings account.  A health savings account is a special savings account which enables you to pay for health costs and save for future medical expenses tax free.  You own and control the money in your health savings account, and you also make decisions on what type of investments you participate in to make your savings grow.  This information was obtained from the US Treasury’s website on HSA’s. 

State Farm and Assurant health have combined company histories of 175 years which helps to make them a great team.  This alliance assists State Farm agents in fulfilling their customers’ unique needs and desires and manage the risks of life.

Although health insurance rates continue to rise, affordable health insurance can still be found.  Flexible Blue is an affordable individual health plan offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) for families and individuals who live in Michigan.

Flexible Blue is an HSA qualified health insurance plan, with monthly premiums as low as $52.82 per month for a plan with a 5000 deductible.

Maternity Coverage, and Dental Insurance are optional packages that can be added to your Flexible Blue health insurance plan

More information about Michigan health insurance.

June 1, CIGNA began offering individual health insurance plans in Connecticut.  Their portfolio of health plans for CT residents include open access managed care plans and high-deductible health plans that are HSA eligible.  Until this recent product launch, CIGNA had only offered health insurance to mid to large employer groups in Connecticut.

In addition to offering health plans for individuals in Connecticut, CIGNA also offers individual health plans in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee & Texas.

More information about Connecticut health insurance.

It has become an increasingly common problem that people are purchasing individual health insurance plans believing that they have sufficient health insurance coverage only to find out later that their health plan is chock full of loop holes, exclusions, limitations that make it difficult to realize full protection in the case of a severe accident, injury or illness.

There are many solid individual health insurance plans out there, but the problem arises when people lose their employer sponsored health coverage and must replace this coverage on their own, and very affordably.

In their quest to find a low-cost health insurance plan, many individual health insurance shoppers chose a plan with a super low monthly premium, and with a few must haves that they can identify on the surface.

A few things that health insurance shoppers can do to weed out the majority of these issues are as follows:

1. Avoid plans that are marketed as limited benefit plans.  These are not major-medical health insurance policies and will not proect you adequately in the case of a serious situation
2. Avoid health plans that cap benefits at less than $250,000
3. Avoid policies that do not have limits on out of pocket costs
4. Avoid plans that do not cover the first day of a hospital stay.

As previously mentioned, there are plenty of good individual health plans in each state.  However, you when shopping for the plan that is best for you, make sure to look deeper than the monthly premium.  You should be able to find an affordable health insurance plan that provides adequate protection for you and your family.

If you have health insurance, either through an employer or one of the many individual health plans, it’s possible that you still don’t have enough coverage! Roxanne Patel Sheplavy exposes the new health trend in the February 2009 issue of Fitness magazine: more Americans than ever are underinsured. The Commonwealth Fund defines being “underinsured” as spending 5-10% of your income on out-of-pocket expenses, including skyrocketing deductibles and extremely expensive co-payments that may prevent individuals from recieving essential medications or care. One in seven adults in 2007 fell in this category, and in this economy even more employers and insurers are cutting back on what their health insurance policies cover.

Fortunately, Roxanne stresses that there are resources available to help the underinsured before they are burdened by medical debt (believe it or not, three-quarters of medical bankruptcies involve individuals and families that had insurance!). These organizations may be able to assist you in paying your bills, renegotiating payments, or whatever else you need to handle your medical expenses.

Where To Go If You Are Underinsured:

• Co-Pay Relief
• Healthwell Foundation
• Patient Services Incorporated
• Patient Access Network Foundation
• CancerCare

While COBRA is helpful as individual health insurance to those who have been laid off, it is temporary and far more expensive than employer-sponsored health insurance, says Enhanced Online News. Even though the economic stimulus package proposes to pay up to half the cost of COBRA premiums for one year, one of several alternatives may be better suited to your health care needs. All of these options will ensure that you don’t experience a long gap in coverage.

If you expect to find a job with health benefits in the relatively near future, short term health insurance might be your best bet.

If you are generally healthy, high-deductible plans can help you save money on insurance while unemployed. They offer catastrophic coverage with lower premiums and few fringe benefits.

If you had family health insurance at your last employer, buying individual health plans for each member could actually be cheaper than buying a family plan on the open market. Children may also be eligible for enrollment in government-funded health programs like SCHIP.

No matter your situation, get health insurance quotes from various insurers; you may find a better deal than COBRA from another company.

(Photo credit: erik! under CC 2.0)

Judith Graham from the Chicago Tribune recently wrote about the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan, and its coverage for those individuals unable to buy Illinois health insurance elsewhere. There is a cap on the number of people that can enroll (currently almost 6,000) in order to ensure that its costs are fully covered by state funding and its premiums, which can’t be higher than 150% of what a regular insurance premium costs in the market. This program is reserved for U.S. citizens and legal residents, and has a $2.5 million cap on lifetime benefits, according to Judith.

Currently, Illinois has about a thousand slots remaining in ICHIP’s traditional pool, so it’s worth looking into if you have unsuccessfully attempted to buy individual health coverage or suffer from certain chronic, uninsurable conditions including:

• Juvenile diabetes
• AIDS
• leukemia
• Parkinson’s disease
• multiple sclerosis
• cystic fibrosis

This program is different from the HIPAA plan, which is intended for those who have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance and exhausted their COBRA unemployment insurance.