Here are some basic guidelines to help you choose the health insurance plan that best suits your needs and your budget.

Health Insurance plans generally fall into one of two categories:

• Indemnity (also known as reimbursement) plans let you choose your own doctor. Here, depending on the plan you choose, your medical expenses are either totally paid, in part, or up to a certain amount per day for a certain number of days.
• Managed Health Care plans include HMO (Health Maintenance Organizations), PPO (Preferred Provider Organizations), and POS (Point of Service) plans. All of these require an agreement between the Insurer and a network of doctors, hospitals, and other health services providers.

A good health insurance policy will involve several types of coverage, such as:

• Major medical expense insurance covering your losses from catastrophic injury or illness.
• Surgical expense insurance covering surgeon’s fees and related costs for any surgeries you require.
• Hospital expense insurance paying for your room and incidental costs if you should be hospitalized.
• Physicians expense insurance covering office visits, or for a doctor's visit to the hospital.

There may be additional policies and benefits included in your package. If you are working through us, feel free to ask about adding coverage in your health insurance quote for items such as prescription drugs, mental health, maternity care, dental or vision plans.

Before you decide on a plan, the following items are important considerations that increase with less coverage:

• Co-payment, which is paid each time you visit your health care provider.
• Deductible, which is paid toward your medical expenses before the insurance company begins to pay on your claims.
• Co-insurance, which is a percentage of the medical costs that you need to pay, after you've paid the deductible amount.

In summation, health plans can vary in many ways including deductible amounts, coinsurance rates, maximum lifetime benefits, how much prescriptions are covered, whether the plan covers self employed persons on the job (24 hour coverage) and the size of the provider network.

While available health insurance plans vary based on your geographic area and even zip code, a Benefits NW representative can explain all of these details when they present your health insurance plan quotes.

Group/Small Business Coverage

We also serve the small business and group health insurance marketplace.  Plans vary in coverage similar to individual health insurance, however, underwriting takes into consideration the status of the entire group of employees and dependents that need to be insured.   In some cases, many cases, plan costs are lower than similar benefits for individual coverage.