Helpful Tips to Cutting Your Healthcare Insurance Costs

Why pay more for health insurance coverage when you can pay less? In fact, 60% of consumers pay more for insurance out of ignorance, and that is why you must speak with health advisors and other finance experts to help calculate your insurance premiums; most especially health insurance since this is prone to certain factors that impact on your policy cover and the amount you pay as premiums.

Now, let’s cut to the chase. You can manage your health insurance premium by bearing the following advice in mind:

1. Stay in your network

Most health insurance companies have a network of hospitals they use for consumers, so stay within the network and do not use other hospitals outside of the network or you end up incurring higher expenses for your medical requirements. You must be aware that insurers have already negotiated fair pricing with health providers.

2. Increase your deductible

When you increase your deductibles or out-of-pocket expenses, insurers generally offer you a discounted premium that is much affordable to you.

3. Avoid emergency rooms

Health professionals will tell you that emergency care treatments induce expensive costs on your health insurance policy. For instance, a woman had something stuck in her throat and on calling her doctor, she was told she would have her throat scoped, and needed to go to ER. But the specialists at ER found she had heartburn and wanted to do EKG, but she said NO. The team also wanted to do some blood tests but she stood firm and said NO.

Finally, she only had that thing in her throat removed and was then presented with a bill of $4,500. Imagine if she had agreed to be talked into doing the other things, but you must as well know that she had medical insurance in place. So if possible, avoid emergency rooms.

4. Always review your policy cover

Always review your health policy and how it has been serving you in the past 24 months. Has the policy been serving your basic needs or you’ve just been paying for certain things you don’t and won’t need? It might also be helpful to anticipate certain expenses like childbirth or any foreseeable treatment to see how the frequency of such needs impacts on your health plan.

5. Think about co-pays and co-insurance

Co-paying for health needs drives down your premiums to a great extent, and when you are also in a co-insurance program for out of network hospital treatments, then you are entitled to lower premium payments.

Do not forget to always shop widely before finally purchasing any health insurance plan, and be certain to read the fine prints before signing the dotted lines.