What Factors Affect Florida Individual Health Insurance?
When researching individual health care insurance policies, several key factors must be evaluated before choosing a policy. There is a choice between HMO and PPO programs, the level of out of pocket expenses (yearly deductibles and co-pays), and the financial strength of the insurance company to evaluate. But, the most significant factor to modify your coverage is the health insurance provider's practices on the medical underwriting of applicants for new policies.
Medical underwriting of individual health benefit policies is somewhat different from what is required for group insurance programs. Per the law, in a group health plan, there should not be discrimination in benefits offered to any individual member of the group based the person's health status. However, for individual health insurance plans, discrimination due to the health status of the person is routinely performed now and is generally legal! If a person who applies for an individual health insurance plan has an existing medical condition, the insurance provider is free to refuse insurance to the applicant or to offer only insurance that excludes the medical condition or disability.
This will occur because of the process of medical underwriting of each individual insurance policy which is applied to most new policies purchased by consumers in the individual insurance marketplace. What medical underwriting actually means is that the health insurance provider is analyzing the likely financial risk attributable to the proposed policy based on the specific health status of the individual. When considering a new insurance policy, consumers would be wise to call the medical underwriting organization of the insurance provider early in the process to see how they deal with specific health issues.