Individual Health Insurance

Finding the Right Individual Health Plan, Part 1: Assessing Your Benefit Needs

If you're considering individual health insurance coverage, you have to do some comparison shopping to find a plan with the right benefits and price to fit your needs. You'll find there are many plans available to choose from: lower-cost basic benefit plans, more comprehensive benefit-rich plans, HSA-compatible plans and short-term temporary plans. How do you know what's right for you?

This is the first of three blog posts focusing on helping you assess your needs so you can make a sound decision. First, you'll want to answer the question "What health benefits will I use?" so you'll have an idea of how much coverage you need in a plan.

It helps to break the question down into smaller parts:

• Do I need to utilize PPO network doctors and hospitals?
• How often do I or other covered individuals visit a primary doctor? Specialists?
• Do I need coverage for prescription drugs?
• Do I want supplemental accident coverage?
• Do I want other optional benefits?
• Do I need coverage primarily for the "big ticket items" like accidents and illnesses?

Compare your plan alternatives side-by-side to see which plans offer the level of coverage you're looking for. You'll see that some plans offer very basic coverage while others provide a wider range of benefits and more flexibility with plan choices and benefit options. You may like the benefits on one plan more than another's, but you may find its price to be outside of your comfort zone. That's why the next step is to think about how each benefit affects the plans' cost.

In my next post, I'll give some tips to help you find a plan with the right coverage and price. There are some tricks to getting the benefits you need while staying within your budget. Prepare yourself to answer this question:

"How much can I afford to spend?"

In the meantime, visit Celtic's Consumer Learning Center to learn more.