If the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2009 did nothing else, it certainly changed the way healthcare insurance operates in America. The mandate that everyone in the country has to maintain insurance puts a lot of pressure on citizens to abide by the law, even with the penalty for not doing so removed.
For a majority of the U.S. population, maintaining healthcare insurance is of little concern because most employers do provide coverage for their employees. It’s the people who didn’t have or can’t get coverage through their employers who need to take action.
That brings everything to this point in time. With the current COVID19 pandemic still wreaking havoc on the country, millions of Americans are not working. When people aren’t working, they don’t have healthcare coverage through an employer and can’t always afford to purchase insurance on their own.
Where do you stand at this time? Are you compliant with the ACA? Are you aware that no matter if you are employed or not, you always have an option to buy healthcare on your own?
Why You Need Healthcare Insurance
No matter what, maintaining healthcare insurance is always a choice. Even with the ACA penalty in place, people had the right to reject coverage as long as they were willing to pay the mandatory penalty. While it’s always a choice, you need to seriously think about the consequences if you don’t maintain coverage.
Another thing the ACA did was push the cost of healthcare through the roof. Now, the average American has little ability to cover even basic treatment costs. That’s a huge risk you can ill afford to take. Without insurance coverage, you might be one major illness or injury away from financial disaster. That’s why you need insurance.
There is another reason for you to carry insurance, a reason people don’t talk about very often. If you have insurance, you would be far more likely to take preventative measures. You would likely commit to regular medical checkups, which could play a key role in keeping you healthy. It could also play a role in detecting potentially serious medical issues before those medical issues flare-up. It’s easier to treat medical conditions before they become a serious problem.
How to Select a Healthcare Insurance Plan
If you don’t have healthcare insurance but want it, you’ll have a lot of directions you can go. You can go with a very basic policy and hope to avoid major medical issues, or you can go after a comprehensive insurance plan that offers you a wide range of healthcare options.
The two primary types of insurance plans you should be focusing on would be PPO and HMO plans. For your benefit, we would like to explain the difference between these two options.
If you are less sensitive to costs and want access to your own doctors, you would want to go with the PPO Preferred Provider Organization option. With this option, you would get more flexibility as to where you could go for treatment, both doctors and hospitals. If you wanted to settle on in-network treatment, you could do so at lower costs. At the same time, you could choose to go anywhere you want for specialized treatment with a higher copay requirement. In some cases, you might have to file actual claims and get reimbursement with this option.
If you are struggling a little financially, the HMO Health Maintenance Organization option might be preferable. Your monthly premiums would be lower, and you would pay less out-of-pocket to doctors and hospitals. The catch is you could only use doctors and hospitals within the network. If you were to need to go out of the network, all of the costs related to doing so would come out of your pockets. This option would require less effort on your part because other than dealing with your copay obligations, all other payments would be handled between the insurance company and the healthcare providers.
Getting Access to Dental Insurance
Regardless of what medical care option you choose, you should make every effort to also secure dental insurance coverage. The fact you are unemployed or don’t have insurance through your employers should not be relevant to you taking care of your teeth. If you were to let your teeth go, the associated dental problems you might encounter could easily cause medical health problems as well.
If you take care of your teeth, your teeth will take care of you. When choosing dental insurance, you should have access to either of the same PPO or HMO options.
With your dental insurance in place, we hope you will come to us for your dental care. As a top dental care provider, we will always make a big effort to help keep you smiling and your teeth healthy.
