You need to find the best health insurance coverage for your needs at an affordable price. To avoid the most common traps, you should understand the meaning of a few basic things: coinsurance, copay, deductible, and premium.

The right plan can save you thousands of dollars per year, so you should be careful when choosing one.

Here are some tips that will come in handy when choosing the right health insurance policy for your needs:

1. Find Your Marketplace

If you get health insurance through your employer, you will not need marketplaces. If you still wish to have an alternative plan other than your employer’s, you can look for one. Just know that marketplace place plans tend to cost more than employer’s health insurance.

2. Don’t Overbuy

If you are young and healthy, you should consider getting a plan that has a high deductible and a low monthly premium. Such a plan will allow you to save thousands of dollars per year if you only visit the doctor occasionally for checkups. However, it can get expensive if you fall sick unexpectedly.

You will have to pay for most of your medical expenses out-of-pocket and if you stay overnight at the hospital, they will increase even more. You also need to compare the cost of inpatient vs. outpatient care before making your decision.

3. Consider Your Dependents

If you have children below the age of 26 who do not have any health insurance, you can add them to your insurance plan. Your policy cannot exclude children who are below the age of 19 due to pre-existing conditions. Therefore, you need to consider your children when choosing health insurance coverage.

4. Identify Must-Haves

Although it is impossible to foresee a sudden illness or injury, you can always plan for some medical needs. For instance, maternity coverage is necessary if you are planning to start a family in the near future. Not all policies offer maternity coverage, so you should be careful.

Does your family have a history of heart disease? You might want to ensure that your coverage includes the expenses of cholesterol-lowering drugs as well as cardiac screening tests.

Under the ACA, whether you are a child, woman, or man, your health insurance plan should cover the cost of more than 24 preventive services. These include tests for colon cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol.

5. Know the Costs You Will Pay

Plans have to state how much you will pay out-of-pocket through coinsurance and copays. These refer to a form of sharing costs that allows you to pay only a small percentage of the medical fee. If you get sick frequently, small copays will add up quickly. Moreover, an expensive medical procedure can leave you with high out-of-pocket costs to the tune of thousands of dollars.

6. Compare Benefits

By now, you have probably narrowed down your options to just a few. To end up with only one plan, you should revisit the list of benefits to check the one that covers a wider scope of services. While some plans have better emergency coverage, others have better mental coverage.

Skipping this step could mean missing the best plan for your needs. You should ask the following questions to your potential insurer:

• Which maternity services do you cover?
• How do I sign up?
• Which documents will I require?
• How do you cover my medication under this plan?
• Which drugs do you cover under this plan?

Conclusion

If you are looking for the best health insurance coverage for your needs, the above tips will be helpful. Just make sure that you consider your budget.