What Factors Affect South Carolina Individual Health Insurance?
When researching individual health coverage, a number of factors should be evaluated before choosing a final policy. There is a choice between the HMO and PPO approaches to insurance, the amount of out of pocket expenses (yearly deductibles and co-payments), and the financial stability of the insurance provider to evaluate. But, the most relevant factor to affect your coverage is the insurance provider's practices on the medical underwriting of new policies.
Medical underwriting of individual insurance plans is dramatically different from practices in group health benefit programs. Per the law, in a group health plan, there must not be any discrimination in coverage applied to any group member based on that person's specific health status. However, for individual health insurance plans, discrimination arising from individual health status is routinely practiced today and is absolutely legal! If a person who applies for an individual health care benefits policy has a disability or 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 because of the requirement for medical underwriting of a new health insurance policy which applies to many newly issued policies purchased by consumers in the open marketplace. What medical underwriting actually means is that the health benefits provider is evaluating the potential financial risk attributable to the new policy based on the individual health status of the applicant. When considering a new insurance policy, consumers can always talk to the medical underwriting department of the insurance provider first to find out how they treat certain medical issues.