Did you consider whether or not you qualify for public programs?
Medicaid is generally for low-income individuals and families with specific health condition(s) or family arrangement. Or Medicare is generally for 65+, some disabled, or all end stage renal disease persons.
In progressive locales, governments may have local health coverage for its residents. In San Francisco, Healthy San Francisco offers basic health needs to all residents by formalizing the fragmented safety net care.
If the aforementioned are not applicable and no insurance is out of the question, then shop for an individual health insurance plan.
Since the individual health insurance market is unregulated, comparison shopping sites like ehealthinsurance.com has not changed much in the last decade. I highly recommend researching health care benefits and receiving comparison quotes from this easy-to-use site. It offers well-known carrier options, applicable by locale: Aetna, Blue Cross, Health Net, Humana, Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, UnitedHealthcare, and more.
When providing your profile, have the following information handy:
- Gender (Premiums are often banded by gender. Women have different needs than men, biologically speaking)
- Birthday (Premiums are often banded by age groups. A 60 year old’s premium and costs will be much higher than a 30 year old’s)
- Tobacco usage in the last 12 months (Kick that smoking habit already!)
- Zip code (Not all large insurance companies have offerings in each locale. i.e. Kaiser Permanente)
- Date of coverage to begin (Try to pick the beginning or the 15th of the month, which are easy to remember dates.)
Then presto, a list of health plans with monthly premium, plan type (HMO, PPO, or POS), deductible amount, coinsurance level, and office visit cost are quickly displayed. You can research more about the plans in regards to user reviews, benefit details, and physician network.
The user reviews are fairly weak considering there is no way to follow-up with the user to elaborate on experiences. Since the plans offered are from nationally recognizable health plans, you can ask a friend with coverage from the same company.
Next up, researching a health plan for a friend.
