Health insurance is any arrangement that helps to delay, defer, reduce or altogether avoid payment for health care incurred by individuals and households.

If you do not have group insurance, or if the insurance offered is very limited, you can buy an individual policy. There are number of low-cost individual health insurance policies like fee-for-service, HMO, or PPO protection.

In fee-for-services health insurance you have a pre-agreed health insurance sum, and when you make a claim your health insurance provider deducts this from your pre-agreed health insurance sum. The cost of a fee-for-service health insurance is high, but the benefit of fee-for-services health insurance is that you can visit any healthcare provider you want, but at the same time you need to remember that there are some types of treatment are not covered.

Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) are a recently introduced but popular insurance coverage. The main reason for its popularity is its very low cost in premiums. But HMOs do not give you the flexibility to visit any health care provider. They designate certain healthcare providers who you are allowed to visit and if, even in the case of an emergency, you visit a healthcare provider who is not approved by the HMO, you’ll be left to pick up the entire tab yourself.

PPOs, or preferred provider organizations, serve only a specific group or association, and are a good option because they have lower fees with a network of health care providers. They give their policyholders a financial incentive to stay within that network and, as a PPO member, you pay for services as they are received and are reimbursed for the cost of the treatment less your co-payment.

By: Kristy Annely