Health and Wellness A-Z
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How to Evaluate Health Insurance CompaniesWhen you're debating over where to spend your money for the best possible individual or group health insurance coverage, there's plenty to consider – and it's not just the premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Before you start seeking health insurance quotes, it's prudent to take a look at the health insurance companies and their potential service to you as a consumer.In your evaluation of an insurance company, you should ask yourself questions that include the following:
How to check out your prospective health insurance providerFinancial rating An easy place to start is your prospective insurer's financial rating. Free resources, such as A.M. Best's Financial Strength Ratings provide online ratings of insurance companies and their ability to fulfill their financial obligations to the consumer. Nowadays, health insurance portals will offer insurance company ratings before you buy.Who provides your health care?Take a look at a health plan's network of physicians – and take a look at the physicians. The American Medical Association offers free basic information about every licensed physician in the United States. Your local library also likely carries the Official ABMS Directory of Board Certified Medical Specialists.Provider customer serviceFrom the very start of your interaction with an insurance company, you can gauge their customer service by noting the way they respond to your questions (and hopefully, you'll have many). Are they sympathetic to your individual needs? Are they trying to help solve your problems?Independent rankingsYou can also get information about customer satisfaction through resources such as Consumer Reports – with membership – and through annual rankings by magazines such as U.S. News & World Report.The National Committee for Quality Assurance also provides an online Report Card that allows you to compare plans based on criteria that includes member satisfaction. Once you've narrowed the field, you might also resort to good old Google &ndash and doing a search on the company's name for articles OR a search with pairing the company name with the word "complaints" or "violations." You can also do the same with the name of your state plus "insurance commissioner" and "complaints" to see the number of complaints filed against a carrier. Naturally, you can also get a sense of an insurance company's customer service by talking to customers: your friends, family, and colleagues in your field. Once you've done your homework on health insurance companies' customer service, financial stability and policy quality, your research comparing health insurance quotes will be that much easier. |