How to lower your Medical Coverage

You may be wasting money month after month on your medical insurance policy. You might be able to use certain tricks and get a lower insurance rates.  Combining your family's insurance coverage and a getting a combined singe policy may be the most cost effective approach.  However often families will do better with two or more separate plans.

Here are some of the circumstances in which buying separate individual health insurance plans might be more cost effective include when you need to insure:

- A adult and a single child
- A family needing pregnancy insurance
- An adult or adults over 49 needing coverage for a child
- Families where the wife or husband is older by ten years or more

Usually when an insurance policy or any other thing seems almost the same as another thing but has a much lower price, it is a clue that the value or quality is different.  This is usually true with medical coverage, however in many cases it is not.  Sometimes the difference in price says more about the way the insurance company calculates their prices than it does about the quality of the coverage.

Getting different medical care coverage plans does have a potential downside.  In some plans there are limitations on deductibles and other cost shares when family members are insured on the same plan.  These negatives need to be weighed against any premium savings you get by placing your family members on separate plans.

The reason that buying separate or individual health care policies is a less expensive strategy for certain families is that health care insurance carrier calculate  their prices using different methods.  This means that certain families will get a better premium with certain calculation methods.

Some insurers will calculate the premium for each family member and just add those prices together to determine the premiums for a family. Other times a carrier will calculate the cost based on the age of the younger spouse.  Other insurers will determine the rate based on the age of the older spouse. 

If carriers determine premiums for their medical policies based on the age of the older adult and the number of people to be insured, buying healthcare coverage for one child and a adult can mean that you pay the same rate for the child as one would pay for an adult.  The only way to pay the lower child rate for the child is to get him or her a separate health and accident insurance policy.  A family like this may pay less buying separate insurance policies or by buying a policy where the prices are determined for each member of the family separately.

Families that want pregnancy coverage will often save money by covering the future mother-to-be by herself.  Many of the accident and health insurance policies that include pregnancy benefits will include other benefits that other family members will not need. Parents in their fifties and sixties who have kids often pay more when they cover their entire family on the same policy.

Some insurance carriers will determine a rate based on the older spouse's age.  Some carriers calculate their prices based on the age of the younger spouse.  Shop around if there's ten years or more between the age or you and your spouse. Large families often save money by buying one policy and with a company that offers a family rate.  Companies that calculate their premiums by adding together the prices for each family member together can cost them too much.

It is important that you shop around when searching for health insurance.  Different company use different methods of calculating premiums.  You may be pleasantly surprised at the price you find when you look at other health and accident insurance carrier's premiums.

Alston J. Balkcom can has been an insurance agent since 1985 and can help you find information regarding Florida Medicare Insurance