If you have just finished college you may find that you are not covered any longer by your parent’s medical insurance policy and will have to find cover until you obtain a job and fall within your employer’s health insurance scheme. Similarly, if you have recently started a new job, you could find that you are required to work for a few weeks or months before you are eligible to join his healthcare plan. Of course these are merely two of the many reasons that lead to a need for temporary health insurance cover.
So what is interim health insurance coverage?
As its name suggests, it is health insurance which provides medical cover for a short time to allow you to maintain cover while moving between permanent medical insurance plans. Coverage is normally issued for anywhere from one to twelve months, although a lot of insurers today restrict plans to a maximum period of six months. In the majority of cases insurance companies also appreciate that it can be difficult to know exactly how long you are going to require temporary cover for and so are frequently quite flexible in allowing you to extend cover beyond the original expiry date if necessary.
Temporary health insurance plans normally provide similar cover to that of permanent policies but there are some very important differences.
Policies are generally strictly indemnity policies and do not cover you for preventative treatments, like check-ups, and will exclude dental and optical coverage. Existing health conditions and work-related injury or illness are also usually excluded.
A short term medical insurance policy will usually cover you for emergency medical care, medicines, hospital treatment (including intensive care treatment), x-ray and laboratory work, ambulance care and, sometimes, in-home medical care.
How do you go about finding a temporary health insurance policy?
Your first step needs to be to decide how many weeks or months you need cover for and when you need it to start. You then need to find yourself an agent who specializes in temporary health insurance.
Examine any plans offered with care and pay special attention to the exclusion clauses. Ask questions if there is anything which you do not understand or are concerned about. Also, review any application and ensure that all of your personal information is accurate before signing it. Lastly, remember to keep a copy of all the paperwork for your own files.
The price of an interim health insurance policy will vary with the type of cover that you select. However, you can keep the cost down by opting to have a high deductible added to the policy (the amount of money that you must pay towards your medical bills before the plan starts to pay out) with a 50/50 co-insurance option (the split in payment of each bill between the insurance company and you) instead of the more common 80/20 ratio.
Also, do not forget that there are a number of extras which you may wish to consider, depending on your particular circumstances. For instance, with today’s high cost of prescription medication you might be better off purchasing coverage rather than leaving it off.
Most important of all, you must to remember to read through any interim medical insurance plan very carefully and make sure you are getting the coverage which you want and which you will be paying for.
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