Discover How to Sign Up for Affordable Health Insurance and Save Cash!

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Most people might chuckle if they saw these words in the same sentence, one right after the other: affordable health insurance. Health insurance monthly premiums have become the biggest single expense in our lives - surpassing even mortgage payments. In fact, if you have any permanent health problems, such as diabetes, or have had cancer at one time in your family history, your monthly cost could easily be more than the house and car payment combined.

Just trying to find affordable health insurance can seem like a trek to find the Holy Grail. If you have always had a health insurance benefit where you work - especially a state or federal employee - and now have to buy your own, you may not be able to afford the level of health insurance coverage you have become used to.

However, if you know where to look, affordable health insurance can be found.

To fit your monthly budget, obviously, on the hunt for affordable health insurance, price is the one of the most important factors in your decision making process. But, even more importantly, you want a company that has a good record for paying without fighting with you on every detail. Take any budget and you can find a great car. Take any budget and you can find a great affordable health insurance. Maybe you won't be able to afford a "Mercedes" insurance policy but there is no reason that you can't find a solid "Toyota" policy.

There are many reasons why, but the internet has made easy to shop for affordable health insurance.

1. Submitting your health insurance claim is much easier. You don't need a "local agent" anymore to submit your claim. Now, the medical provider does it for you. You save money because the health insurance company saves money by not paying the agent commission. This could amount to an 8% to 12% savings to you.

2. Want thorough information about all of the insurance companies that you are considering? Just jump on Google or Yahoo and within seconds you'll have it. Since local agents can only represent a few insurance companies, generally they point you to the best health insurance product for your health and financial needs (unless their product is actually the best.)

3. In addition, because it is so easy and quick for customers to compare rates online, health insurance companies strive to be extremely competitive. Thank God for the Internet because not too long ago, to get the best deal, you would have had to spend countless hours making phone calls and driving all over town to talk and meet with local agents. And many of these guys treated you like you weren't worth their time or effort. Now you can just jump online to get the info you need.

4. In just a couple of milliseconds, you can do what used to take up a couple of weeks. Now, you don't have to call your local agent, drive over to their office to get the claims paperwork, mail the paperwork back to them, wait for your agent to submit the paperwork to your insurance company only to have to wait a couple of weeks for the insurance company to process everything, mail your check and then wait for the snail mail to get to you.

5. Instead of having to remember let alone mail a damn check every month to the insurance company, you can just have your payments charged to your credit card. Also, it gives you another 30 days before you actually have to pay. Also, many companies today give an additional discount for "auto-pay".

Realizing that health insurance's main function is to protect you from a heavy financial loss rather than protecting you from spending money on splinter removal is the single most important secret to finding affordable health insurance. These little expenses will not hurt you significantly in the pocketbook even if they are a bit of a pain in the ass. Much more likely to destroy your family and you financially is the lung cancer you get diagnosed with just as your daughter is about to head off to college. Protectiing your family, your assets and you is, more than anything else, the purpose of health insurance.

And another way to think of insurance for your purposes is this: as with any type insurance, it is a hedge bet. You are betting that over time you will pay less than you actually need. To grasp the situation simply, this is a good enough way to look at it. However, it may seem to work this way but it really doesn't.

I always hear people compare casinos and insurance companies so let's use that as an example. Most people think that when they place a bet on their team that they are betting against the casino. This is not true. In fact, they are actually betting against all of the people that placed bets for the other team. The casino simply sets the lines to balance the action on both sides and collect a small fee called "the vig".

Like placing a bet at the sportsbook for your favorite team, the casino is not betting against you. Actually, insurance companies determine the average cost per person by averaging the cost of a large yet similar group. Next, they charge everyone in the group the same price with the knowledge that they will pay less money to some in the group and more money to others but averaging the same amount of money to each person over time. Then they simply tack on their fee (like the casino's vig) for paying everyone when the money is needed for health situations. For the most part, you are betting that you are going to need more money for your health care than the average person in the group will need. This is what the insurance industry calls the "law of large numbers" and is what really makes affordable health insurance possible.

Most importantly, "affordable" and "cheap" are not synonyms. They do not mean the same thing. A Toyota Camry is "affordable". A Yugo is "cheap". "You get what you pay for" has a lot of truth but it can also be taken too far. Just because someone spends $30,000 more for their car does not mean that they will receive $30,000 more in actual car. You actually get less for your money the more you spend. There are many similarities with health insurance.

The opposite is also true though. Driving a Yugo, for instance, will get you from point A to point B when it's working, but "when" is the operative word. If you're not sure your car is going to start every morning should you rely on it to get you to work? You could get fired for being late or not showing up, right? What if you're a salesman... would you want to drive to a meeting in a dumpy Yugo? I don't know about you but I will never buy anything from somebody driving a Yugo (unless I'm travelling in Eastern Europe.) Not to be a snob but being cheap could cost you money!

With that in mind, you should check the ratings companies such as AM Best (ambest.com) and Standard & Poors (standardandpoors.com) and, in my opinion, select a company with a rating of A or higher. More often that not, the least expensive policy from a highly rated company is much better than the most expensive policy from a lower rated company. Spending a little more money to go with the better company is almost certainly the better deal and the better way to go. After all, what good is a less expensive insurance policy if the company won't pay you when you need it? Not much good!

In conclusion, yes, finding affordable health insurance is much easier than most people think.

Taking more of the risk with higher deductibles, spending a little time on the internet comparing eight to ten different companies, and deleting coverage that you will not likely need (such as maternity for many folks) will make it very possible to find your own affordable health insurance.

Ed Brancheau, aka The Insurance Egghead (http://www.insurance-egghead.com/l), guides businesses, families and individuals toward finding affordable health insurance (http://www.insurance-egghead.com/affordable-health-insurance.html). His website, The Insurance Egghead, has pages and pages of free guides, articles and advice about every type of insurance: health, dental, vision, accident and life.

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