Health Insurance
Health insurance can be very confusing. So here's a video made by TeenLink Hawaii to help you better understand what it is and how it works.
What is health insurance?
Health insurance is a plan that people buy that gives them coverage on many various kinds of medical care. Coverage usually includes things like doctor’s appointments, emergency room visits, hospital stays, and medication.
The reason for health insurance is that medical care is very expensive without it. Most people can’t afford the out-of-pocket cost for the things mentioned above. With health insurance, people pay a smaller, fixed amount every month and their insurance pays for much of their medical care costs that would otherwise be much higher.
Health insurance is required in the United States.
Health insurance can include many unknown words like deductible, claim, policy, or premium. Click this link for a full rundown of all the vocabulary you’ll need to know when learning about health insurance.
How do I get a health insurance plan?
You are probably under your parents’ plan right now. In the United States, children can stay on their parent’s health insurance plan until the age of 26.
Your parents are probably under an employer plan, which is the way most people in the US get their healthcare. An employer plan is usually the cheapest option of healthcare, as the employer helps you to pay for part of the health insurance.
Medicaid (also known as “medical assistance”) is a type of government-funded health insurance plan. Since healthcare is required in the United States, but many people can’t afford insurance, the government funds it for many people in a plan called Medicaid. Therefore only certain people like low-income adults and people with disabilities qualify for Medicaid.
What type of health insurance plan should I get?
Every specific health insurance plan is different in terms of how much it costs, what is covered, and what’s not. It is important when choosing a health insurance plan to weigh its benefits versus its costs. You want to have the most benefits (things covered) for the least cost (how much you pay) possible.
Benefits (what the insurance plan covers) can include everything from regular doctors appointments (like your annual physical) to emergency room visits (like getting a cast or stitches) to even counseling sessions or dental and vision care. However, your plan may not provide coverage on all of these things, so it is important to know what care it exactly includes, and which care is important to you to have. If you have eyesight issues, you probably want to choose a plan that includes vision care. If you struggle with a mental health disorder, you probably want a plan that covers counseling and therapy sessions. Evaluate and choose what’s right for you but make sure you are aware of which benefits that your health insurance plan includes.
Costs (how much you pay) of a health insurance plan not only include the premium, but also your co-pay and your prescriptions. A premium is the basic amount you pay to the insurance company each month to buy health coverage. A co-pay is the portion of the bill that you are responsible for each time you receive a service. For example, your doctor's appointment may cost $100, and your insurance will pay for $75 of it, so you have to pay $25 out of pocket. That $25 is your co-pay. Any prescriptions (medications) you may need also cost money that the insurance can cover some of, but you again may have out-of-pocket costs to cover the rest of the prescription payment that the insurance doesn’t cover. That being said, a plan with a low premium cost may not be the best, because you could have really high co-pay and prescription costs that go along with it. If you have many medications you need to take and prescriptions you need to get, it may be a cheaper overall cost to buy a more expensive premium that covers more prescriptions costs than a cheaper premium does. Again, evaluate what you need from healthcare (if you need prescriptions, go to the doctor frequently, etc.) and choose the plan that is the cheapest for all the coverage you need.
Source: TeensHealth from Nemours Children’s Health System https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/insurance.html
