What Factors Affect Oregon Individual Health Insurance?
When searching for individual health care insurance, a number of key factors should be evaluated before choosing a final policy. There are the options of HMO vs. PPO type policies, the amount of out of pocket costs (yearly deductibles and co-payments), and the financial stability of the insurance provider to evaluate. However, the most significant criterion to influence your insurance coverage is the insurance provider's practices on the medical underwriting of new policies.
The medical underwriting practice for individual health insurance policies is significantly different from practices in group health benefit programs. By law, in a group health insurance plan, there cannot be discrimination in benefits or coverage available to any group member based on that person's specific health status. Alternatively, for individual insurance plans, discrimination resulting from an individual's specific health status is routinely practiced today and is absolutely legal! If a consumer who applies for an individual health insurance policy has a pre-existing condition, the insurance provider is free to deny coverage to the applicant or to provide coverage that excludes the pre-existing condition.
This will occur as a result of the required medical underwriting of every new health care benefits policy which applies to many newly issued policies purchased by consumers in the open marketplace. What the intent of medical underwriting really means is that the insurance provider is evaluating the likely financial risk attributable to the new policy based on the individual health status of the applicant. Before considering a new insurance policy, consumers must always talk to the medical underwriting team of the insurance provider first to find out how they treat certain medical issues.