What Factors Affect Maryland Individual Health Insurance?
When searching for individual health insurance, a number of key factors should be considered before choosing a final policy. There are the options of HMO and PPO type plans, the amount of out of pocket costs (annual deductibles and co-payments), and the financial stability of the insurance provider to evaluate. However, the most important criterion to influence your insurance coverage is the insurance company's practices on the medical underwriting of new policies.
The medical underwriting practice for individual insurance policies is significantly different from what occurs in group health benefit programs. By law, in a group health insurance plan, there can be no discrimination in benefits or coverage available to any member of the group based on that person's specific health status. Alternatively, for individual insurance plans, discrimination based on an individual's specific health status is actively practiced today and is absolutely legal! If a consumer who applies for an individual insurance policy has a pre-existing condition, the insurance company is free to refuse coverage to the applicant or to provide coverage that excludes the pre-existing condition.
This will occur as a result of the medical underwriting of every new health care benefits policy which applies to most new policies purchased by consumers in the open marketplace. What the intent of medical underwriting really means is that the insurance company is evaluating the likely financial risk under the new policy based on the individual health status of the applicant. Before considering a new insurance policy, consumers should always talk to the medical underwriting team of the insurance company first to find out how they treat certain medical issues.