As you try to determine which health insurance plan works best for you and your family, you need to decide:
- How healthy is my family?
- Do I love my doctor?
- Would I rather pay less now and possibly more later?
These are the questions I asked my friend, Linda who was trying to decide which insurance plan to pick for her family. Linda is a very busy mom who is constantly balancing the demands of her job and her family. She has 2 young children and both she and her husband work. Linda has high blood pressure and her husband is diabetic. Linda and her husband struggle to eat healthy and almost never have time to exercise.
To Linda, the health plan choices seemed daunting. Too many choices, no information.
So we asked our 3 questions:
1. How healthy is my family?
In order to easily understand Linda’s family’s health issues, we started by completing her Medical Life list (which you can get for FREE in our ebook What To Do First when you sign up for myhealthspin.com blog).
Once Linda had all her health information at her fingertips, we knew that all the members of her family had some health issues so insurance coverage was important.
Next, we asked:
2. Do I love my doctor?
Linda and her husband were often too busy to go to the doctor. If anyone in the family got sick, they relied on Urgent Care or a local clinic. Having access to an internist and a pediatrician would make Linda’s life easier since her family could get better care.
Whether you have a doctor you love is important to know because when you pick an insurance plan – each plan will have a list of doctors that are “in network.” The cost of the doctor’s visit will be less if you pick one who is in the network of providers for the insurance plan. Since Linda’s family did not have a regular doctor, she could pick any of the plans available that had a doctor that was located nearby.
Lastly, we looked at Linda’s budget and asked:
3. Would I rather pay less now or more later?
As we looked at the insurance plans she could choose from, some cost more per month and some cost less. But of course, the plans that had a lower premium, also covered less. We decided that the middle plan was the best option. It cost a little more per month but Linda’s out-of-pocket cost would be less over the year.
By asking these 3 simple questions, Linda picked her health plan and had confidence she made the right choice.
Stay tuned for my easy information about how to choose insurance in our upcoming book, Choose Your Health Insurance.
I hope this post helps you Spin Your Healthcare Your Way!