Utah Individual Health Insurance
Lesson 8: How to Evaluate Utah Health Insurance Companies
If not, take a few minutes now to get some quotes online. It will take literally 5 minutes, and you'll be so much further along in the game. Alright!
Today we turn our attention to the simple but vital task of evaluating your quotes from the all-important consumer's perspective.
Health insurance is different from most other types of coverage or financial products in that who you deal with is of the utmost importance. (Sure, you want your mortgage broker to be a nice guy, but it's not the end of the world if you don't care for his phone manner.)
Not so with health insurance.
The relationship you have with a health care provider is probably one of the closest and most personal you have, and in these days of managed care, that relationship is becoming increasingly defined by your insurer.
So you need to take the time to evaluate any health plan in terms of how the insurer will control your access to and quality of care. Here's how:
Step one - get policyholder testimonials
This information speaks to the quality of coverage no matter what type of policy you're considering, from pure indemnity to pure HMO. Check out the reputations of any and every potential insurer. Ask family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and your pizza delivery guy both who they use and how they would assess the quality of their care.
There is literally no measure of quality as telling and reliable as the opinion of an experienced customer.
But your work doesn't stop there . . .
Step two - research plan accreditation
There are several national organizations that specialize in evaluating the health care industry in the US for the benefit of consumers. These organization all use some form of "accreditation" to measure consumer satisfaction with the level of service provided by a health insurer. Take a look at what these organizations have to say about any policy you're considering buying.
On thing we want you to know before you take a look at any reports: helpful as they may be, please keep in mind that these organizations are not completely independent of the very health insurers they are evaluating. Many people who sit on the boards of these organizations sit on the boards of insurance conglomerates as well. Furthermore, much of the information used in accreditation is not evaluating by an outside impartial source, but is actually taking the insurer's "word for it".
Still, any yardstick is better than none, and there are definite "absolutes" you can take away from their reports. Definitely steer clear of any insurer that has been denied accreditation by any of these organizations.
(Notice that we said "denied". Some insurers, especially small ones, simply may not have undergone the accreditation process, so the lack of accreditation is not necessarily a black mark).
These three services are a good place to start:
NCQA, the National Committee for Quality Assurance
JCAHO, the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
AAHC, the American Association of Healthcare Consultants
Next: Lesson 9: Getting the best care for your premium
