Get Individual Health Insurance at Group Rates | Home Insurance

by Brockton Barton

When you’re buying health insurance as part of a group plan at work, it’s normally at lower rates on premiums. If you’re self-employed or between jobs, a group health plan may not be an option. If you start another job which does not offer health insurance, or work as an independent consultant, you’ll more often that not notice a sharp rate increase when you buy individual health insurance.

While individual health insurance plans are purchased directly from carriers, leaving out the employer middle man, they do not offer the fuller range of benefits and lower rates associated with the typical workplace group plan. However, individual plans may cover you, your spouse, and your children. The two other main methods to get an individual health insurance plan when you’re not fully employed with a group health plan are to obtain either “short-term” and/or “catastrophic” coverage.

Insurance carriers may reject your application for individual coverage, if you have existing health problems, because they are medically underwritten. But keep in mind, some states require that insurance carriers offer you a policy, no matter what your prior conditions are. So do your homework before you let a carrier reject your desired policy application. Check the list of “Guaranteed Issue Laws”, published by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Individual plan buyers pay premiums determined by their “expected” health care costs, so prices will be higher as they grow older and/or less healthy. But don’t let any confusion tempt you to go without health insurance. Healthy or not, you could have a serious accident, and, as many others are, be forced into “medical bankruptcy.”

So don’t lose your rights to coverage of pre-existing conditions. Don’t go without insurance for 63 days or more, a time period set by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

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