February 18 2009
The Facts About Interim Medical Insurance
Tagged Under : health insurance, interim, medical insurance, short term, temporary
If you have just finished college you might find that you are not covered any more under your parent’s medical insurance plan and will have to look for cover until you obtain a job and fall within your employer’s healthcare scheme. Similarly, if you have just started a new job, you might find that your employer requires you to work for several weeks or months before you are eligible to join his medical insurance scheme. These are merely two of the many reasons that lead to a need for short term medical insurance coverage.
So what is short term health insurance coverage?
As its name suggests, it is medical insurance which provides medical cover for a short period of time in order to allow you to maintain cover while moving from one permanent medical insurance plan to another. Cover is usually issued for anywhere from one month to one year, although a lot of companies nowadays restrict cover to a maximum of six months. In most cases health insurers also appreciate that it is not always easy to know precisely how long you are going to require temporary cover for and so are generally flexible in letting you extend cover past the original expiry date if needed.
Interim medical insurance plans normally provide similar cover to that seen on permanent policies although there are some very important differences.
Plans are generally strictly fee-for-service plans and do not cover you for preventative treatments, such as check-ups, and will exclude dental and optical cover. Existing medical conditions and work-related injury or illness are also generally excluded.
A temporary medical insurance plan will generally cover emergency medical care, medication, hospital treatment (including intensive care treatment), laboratory and x-ray work, ambulance care and, sometimes, in-home medical care.
So, how do you go about finding a temporary medical insurance plan?
The first thing you have to do is to decide how many weeks or months you require the coverage for and when you want it to start. You then need to find an agent who specializes in interim medical insurance.
Examine any plans offered with care and pay particular attention to any exclusion clauses. Ask questions if there is anything which you do not understand or are concerned about. Also, review your application and make sure that all of your personal information is correct before you sign it. Lastly, do not forget to retain a copy of the paperwork for your own records.
The price of a short term medical insurance plan will vary according to the type of cover that you select. You can however keep costs down by choosing to have a high deductible added to the plan (the sum of money which you have to pay towards your healthcare before the plan kicks in) with an equal co-insurance option (the split in payment of each bill between the insurer and you) rather than the more common 80/20 ratio.
Do not forget too that there are a number of extras that you might wish to consider, depending on your personal circumstances. For instance, with the high cost of prescription drugs you could be better off purchasing coverage rather than leaving it off.
The most important thing is to remember to read through any interim health insurance policy very carefully and make sure that you are getting the coverage which you want and that you will be paying for.