Quick Insurance Tips

The cost for private medical insurance is controlled by several factors. Unlike group health insurance, you have control over many of them.

The factors used to calculate a rate for an individual health insurance policy include your age, gender, zip code, smoking status, height to weight ratio, health status, your choice of company and your choice of plan, deductible and other options.

Age impacts the price for health care insurance since a group of 1000 people who are 20 will have fewer medical bills than a group of 1000 people who are 50. Insurance companies look at statistics and determine how gender, location and smoking status impact morbidity and therefore their costs to insure their policy holders.

The factors that you have some control of include:

Location can have an impact on your rates for insurance of all kinds. Your place of residence to a large degree determines which doctors you will go to. If you live in an area where the doctors charge more, your insurance company will likely pay more and they may pass those costs on to you.

Smoking not only has a big impact on mortality, but it also has a big impact on morbidity. You are more likely to get sick at any age if you smoke. Insurance companies are very much aware of this and often give discoutns to non-smokers or charge surcharges to non-smokers.

Your height to weight ratio or body mass index can also have a significant impact on the cost of your policy. Losing weight is difficult, but too much weight can mean that your health insurance policy costs more than it would otherwise. In some cases it means that a policy will not be available to you at all.

Shopping around for medical coverage is always a good idea. When you get health insurance quotes from multiple carriers, you may find that there is a big difference in the cost of similar policies. Choose your company and policy well.

Selecting the right amount of coverage is also important. A higher deductible plan may be much less expensive than a low deductible plan. Usually you will save more in price than you will lose in coverage.