How to choose a health insurance? The flood of companies and offers in the health insurance market makes it necessary to analyze this question in detail. As they say, “separating the wheat from the chaff”. And the fact is that, among these proposals, there are some that should be discarded because they do not fit what we need.
Choosing the right health insurance in each case requires a prior analysis, and not getting carried away by the offers that bombard us. So in this post we are going to look at a series of guidelines that can be followed by anyone who is going to take out a healthcare policy.
4 Tips for choosing and contracting health insurance
1. Health insurance guarantees
The typology of medical insurance is very extensive. We find policies that can cover:
- Specialist visits only → “outpatient” policies.
- With complete coverage (including interventions and hospitalization), but with a choice of company doctors only.
- Reimbursement” policies, which allow you to choose any specialist.
If you want more information about the proposals of the companies for each of these types, take a look at our ranking of health insurance. So our first piece of advice is that rather than listening to the best promotions, it is better to find out what type of policy you are interested in, so that you can start deciding which company suits you best in terms of services and price.
2. Waiting period
The waiting period is the time during which certain guarantees of the policy, despite having been issued, have not yet come into force. This happens for two reasons:
- This is the first time we have taken out a medical policy.
- We have recently changed our health insurance company
It is important to be aware of the latter, since there is a very typical phrase that is often said when receiving offers: “since you already have insurance, the waiting periods are eliminated”. BEWARE: all of them are usually eliminated, except for the childbirth period, which in most cases cannot be removed.
We have group policies that eliminate waiting periods, even for clients who have never had health insurance before.
3. Policy with co-payments or without co-payments
We have already made a blog post, exclusively to talk about when it pays to have co-payments in health insurance. It is very important to know whether our policy has co-payments or not, since our health care bill can go up significantly if we go to the doctor frequently and we do not know that our policy has co-payments. So when you take out your health insurance, make sure you are clear on the question of co-payments.
4. Review the company’s medical chart
It is becoming more and more common for specialists in the medical lists to rotate more frequently. That is why it is important that, if we are interested in a particular doctor, we check if he/she is in the company where we want to have our health insurance.
How to take out health insurance?
If you are already clear about these questions and you are determined to choose your health insurance, you have two great options: Contact an insurance company or contact an insurance brokerage. If you opt for the former, you will only be able to access the options of the insurance company in question, but if you opt for a brokerage, your trusted agent will give you the best options from among the dozens of companies with which they work with complete independence.
Health insurance with a brokerage, why?
It is common for insurance brokers to have group rates, which usually offer advantages over individual policies:
- Non-qualifying periods in medical or health insurance
- Lower prices
- Less rate increases due to changes in the age bracket (if you contract individually with the company, if you use the policy a lot one year, they can give you a “raise”).
If you want to enjoy the advantages of subscribing your health insurance with PIB Group Iberia, call us or write to us. From today, put yourself in good hands.
