What Factors Affect Georgia Individual Health Insurance?
When learning about individual health coverage, multiple key factors should be taken into account before selecting that final policy. There are differences between the HMO and PPO approaches to insurance, the degree of out of pocket fees (deductibles and co-pays), and the financial resources of the insurance provider to consider. However, possibly the most relevant factor to affect your insurance coverage is the insurance company's procedures on the medical underwriting of individual applicants.
The practice of medical underwriting for individual insurance plans differs dramatically from the procedures of group insurance plans. Per the law, in a group health insurance plan, there must not be any discrimination in coverage provided to any individual group member based on the individual's health status. In contrast, for individual health insurance plans, discrimination arising from the individual's current health status is a routine practice today and is considered completely legal! If any person who applies for an individual health care benefits policy has a medical disability or pre-existing health condition, the insurance company may refuse coverage to the person or may provide only health coverage that excludes the disability or condition.
This practice results from the requirement for medical underwriting of every individual health insurance policy which is applied to new policies bought in the open marketplace. What the concept of medical underwriting actually means is that the health benefits provider is evaluating the financial risk likely to arise from the new policy based on the specific health status of the applicant. When thinking about new health insurance, consumers can always talk to the medical underwriting specialists in the health insurance company first to learn more about how they will respond on specific health conditions.