If you’re on the hunt for the right medical insurance at the right price, you’ll likely begin to amass a long list of questions: How is Medicare Advantage different from Medicare? What do all these acronyms mean? Where do I go to compare plan options?
All important questions!
In this guide, we’ll give you three simple ways to begin the process of finding the right medical insurance. Before we begin though, here are two reassuring spoilers for you:
- You have access to excellent resources that can help you find and compare plans.
- Great value-for-money plans like Medicare Advantage are out there, and have enough customization options to help you find a balance between your financial needs and quality care.
So, with that good news fresh in your mind, let’s look at how to start your search for the right medical insurance.
1. Know Your Coverage Needs
When you set out to find a good insurance plan, it can be tempting to think about dollars first and your health second.
It’s vital that you turn that thinking on its head. Before you fire up your browser to delve into the intricacies of Medicare Advantage or the like, you need to have an accurate and up-to-date understanding of your health needs.
Your family doctor and dentist can help you begin that process. Sitting down to talk about preventive health helps you prioritize. For example:
- You may have ongoing medication expenses to consider. Finding a plan with prescription drug coverage may be a prudent move.
- Perhaps you can anticipate a few extra visits to your dentist in the near future to address a few concerns you’ve been putting off. Again, this is vital knowledge before you look at plan options.
- Inevitably, as we advance in age, vision and hearing consultations become a more critical aspect of maintaining a good quality of life. Extending your plan to include these services may make a lot of sense beyond retirement.
Take stock of your medical needs before considering your plan options.
2. Understand Your Options
As you explore your insurance options, the first thing you’ll likely encounter is an alphabet soup of acronyms and terminology.
While it can be tempting to gloss over these terms, understanding the insurance marketplace is important because each broad kind of insurance offers a different combination of flexibility, value, and depth of care.
Now for the good news.
Healthcare.gov offers a convenient and concise summary of the kinds of medical insurance plans. Whether you’re seeking the flexibility of a Medicare Advantage Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plan, or the managed care approach of an Exclusive Provider Organization (EPO), resources like these can help you understand the coverage available, and the medical needs for which they’re ideally suited.
3. Perform Detailed Head-to-head Comparisons
Whatever type of insurance you feel works best for you, careful comparison is a crucial step before you enroll in any plan. While it can feel a little intimidating at first to delve into your various plan options and see how they stack up against one another, the right tools make a difference.
Anthem, for example, offers a step-by-step guide for finding the right Medicare Advantage Plan. By walking through its options and explanatory information, you can gain a solid understanding not just of how each Medicare plan works, but of useful criteria you can use to refine your search.
We all have different health needs, and tools like these give you a streamlined way to match those needs to targeted plans and services.
You Can Find the Right Medical Insurance
In medical insurance, as with most big purchases, it pays to shop around. But it also pays to know your health requirements. In particular, what your health care needs are likely to look like both now and in the near future. Affordable, comprehensive, and tailored medical insurance is out there! And the approaches outlined above will help you find it.