Health Insurance Basics

If you plan to travel to a foreign country, it is important that you provide for your medication needs before leaving. An illness in the middle of your trip can ruin your vacation and cost you money to get needed medications.

Travel Health Insurance is a special policy designed to cover your medical expenses if you get sick or injured on a trip. It covers you for only a limited time, and is usually purchased to cover people on foreign trips. Whether or not you need travel health insurance depends on how likely you think it is that you might need medical care during your trip.

Supplemental insurance is extra or additional insurance that you can purchase to help you pay for services and out-of-pocket expenses that your regular insurance does not cover. Aside from Medigap policies, three other types of supplemental health insurance are widely sold in the U.S.

A pre-existing condition can affect your health insurance coverage. If you are applying for insurance, some health insurance companies may accept you conditionally by providing a pre-existing condition exclusion period. What has been your experience?

Going to college is one of the most important things you can do to secure your financial future. But what happens if you get sick or injured while you're there? Accidents and sudden illness can happen to anyone at any time. So it's important to make sure you have health insurance coverage.

Although HIT has many uses throughout our healthcare system, three important types of health IT may affect you in the near future as more consumers use personal health records (PHRs) and more physicians use electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic prescribing (e-Rx).

Explanation of Benefits, insurance claim forms, and medical bills from your doctor or hospital can be difficult to understand because of the use of codes to describe the services performed and your diagnosis. It may be useful for you to learn about these codes, especially if you have a chronic health problem.

Your Explanation of Benefits is a window into your medical billing history. Many doctors’ offices, hospitals, and medical billing companies make billing errors. Such mistakes can have annoying and potentially serious, long-term financial consequences.

An Explanation of Benefits (EOB) is a form or document that may be sent to you by your insurance company several months after you had a healthcare service. Your EOB gives you information about how an insurance claim from a health provider (such as a doctor or hospital) was paid on your behalf.

A pre-existing condition can affect your health insurance coverage. If you are applying for insurance, some health insurance companies may accept you conditionally by providing a pre-existing condition exclusion period.

If you have been laid off from your job and your former employer has 20 or more employees, the company is required by a 1986 federal law (known as COBRA) to offer you the option to pay for an extension of your health insurance coverage for at least 18 months. COBRA provides you with insurance for you and your family but COBRA can be very expensive.

There are many things that determine how much your health insurance will cost you each month. How much health insurance will cost you depends on your age, the condition of your health (how healthy or unhealthy you are), where in the country you live, your income, and your job status.

No health insurance? Share your story and tell us about how you are managing your family’s health care needs and what you might have learned that could help others.

To protect you and your family from the financial burden of sudden or chronic health conditions, it is important to have health insurance. There are many factors to consider and questions to ask when choosing a health insurance plan.

If you have lost your job, you may be worried about the loss of your employer-based health insurance. To protect you and your family, it is important to try and find some type of health insurance plan during your period of unemployment. Fortunately, if you are handed a pink slip, you do have options to remain insured.

Learn more about negotiating with your healthcare provider for discounts, including how to build goodwill and the best way to broach the subject.

Are discount medical cards a viable alternative to insurance coverage? Find out more!

An open enrollment period for health insurance is typically offered for one or two months a year by many companies to allow employees to make changes to their insurance coverage.

Short term disability insurance pays a percentage of your salary if you become temporarily disabled, which means that you are not able to work for a short period of time due to sickness or injury not related to your job.