What Factors Affect Missouri Individual Health Insurance?
When purchasing individual health coverage, a number of factors should be taken into account before selecting a final policy. There is the choice between the HMO and PPO approaches to insurance, the amount of out of pocket expenses (deductibles and co-pays), and the financial stability of the insurance company to consider. But, perhaps, the most relevant factor to affect your coverage is the insurance company's procedures on the medical underwriting of applicants.
The medical underwriting of individual insurance plans is dramatically different from the procedures of group health insurance programs. By law, in a group insurance plan, there must not be any discrimination in coverage applied to any individual group member based on that member's individual health status. However, for individual insurance plans, discrimination arising from individual health status is a routine practice today and is completely legal! If an applicant for an individual health care benefits policy has a disability or pre-existing condition, the insurance company may refuse coverage to the person or to offer only coverage that excludes the disability or condition.
This practice occurs as a result of the requirement for medical underwriting of a new health insurance policy which is applied to new policies purchased in the open marketplace. What medical underwriting really means is that the health benefits provider is evaluating the potential financial risk likely to arise from the new policy based on the health status of the applicant. Before applying for a new insurance policy, consumers can always talk to the medical underwriting department in the health insurance company first to find out how they deal with various medical issues.