A Helpful Summary of South Carolina Medical Insurance Terms
Georgetown University, through its Health Policy Institute has researched and published a series of health care insurance guides that briefly describe the health insurance regulations in each state throughout the United States. In preparing the guides, a review is made of the state's regulatory requirements that apply to health insurance, as well as pertinent Federal requirements that apply throughout the USA. Additionally, state-specific plans provided by the state government as the state Medicare program are reviewed and summarized in the guides.
Regulations concerning health insurance are quite complex, and most of today's state regulations are built upon the Federal legislation known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In the Georgetown health insurance guides, the HIPAA requirements pertaining to group health insurance, prior credits for pre-existing conditions, COBRA availability and long-term insurance portability are all addressed. By following HIPAA detailed guidelines, a person may keep full-coverage health care benefits for as long as they choose after becoming disqualified from an eligible group plan. However, the timelines are strongly enforced and, as coverage is provided farther away in time from the eligible group health plan, the health coverage levels and premiums will generally become less beneficial.
Since understanding HIPAA requirements and state-managed Medicare programs will be extremely important to finding quality health care insurance, the Georgetown insurance guides should be required early in the task of finding new health insurance. These guides are updated from time to time by Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute and offer a timely and complete look at health benefits and insurance in each state. Click on the link to review the current Consumer's Guide to Getting and Keeping Health Insurance for your state.