What Factors Affect Wisconsin Individual Health Insurance?
When learning about individual health insurance plans, multiple key factors must be considered before selecting that final policy. There are differences between HMO and PPO categories of plans, the degree of out of pocket fees (annual deductibles and co-pays), and the financial resources of the insurance provider to consider. However, possibly the most important factor to affect your insurance coverage is the health insurance company's practices on the medical underwriting of individual applicants.
The practice of medical underwriting for individual health care policies differs dramatically from what happens with group insurance plans. Per the law, in a group health insurance plan, there should be no discrimination in coverage provided to any individual in the group based on the individual's health status. In contrast, for individual health insurance plans, discrimination as a result of the individual's current health status is actively performed now and is considered completely legal! If any person who applies for an individual health benefits plan has a medical disability or pre-existing health condition, the insurance company is free to deny insurance to the applicant or may provide only health coverage that excludes the disability or condition.
This practice results from the necessary medical underwriting of every individual health insurance policy which applies to the majority of new policies bought in the open marketplace. What the concept of medical underwriting actually means is that the health insurance company is evaluating the financial risk under the proposed policy based on the specific health status of the applicant. When thinking about new health insurance, consumers should talk to the medical underwriting specialists of the insurance company early in the process to learn more about how they will respond on specific health conditions.