Temporary Health Insurance

If you are considering to buy a temporary health insurance because of its low costs, read on to understand more about some problems that are not probably understood by policy holders. Firstly, temporary medical insurance will not cover your existing health conditions and they may even reject your application. Unlike life policies where you need to go for a series of medical examinations together with your personal insurance agent, you can simply fill up a short application form and send it in by mail for temporary health plans.

There are only a few very vague questions regarding your personal and family health history, and many people tried to lie at this stage in order to get approval. However, they get into trouble when making a claim as the health insurance company will conduct an investigation into their health records to get the complete truth and reject these as fraud claims. Therefore, you need to read the contract terms carefully, be completely honest and provide every single minor details when applying.

Remember that with a temporary health insurance, you may not be able to automatically renew the policy when it ends. This can be a problem when a policy holder is diagnosed with a long term illness and require substantial medical expenses. While the temporary health insurance is still in force, he/she can still make claims to help pay off the hospital bills but it is unlikely that their insurers will continue to accept their policy renewal.

Many people tried to buy health insurance only after they suspect or have been diagnosed with catastrophic illnesses, but that is often too late. Even though such times are when a medical plan is most needed, the insurance rules are as such.

The above unprotected situations can often happen to people that only rely on the group medical insurance provided by their employers. When they leave their jobs, they often forget that they have just become uninsured and vulnerable to drainings on their personal finances if there are any onsets of major illness.

That is why it is also important to buy private medical insurance that covers your individual health care expenses. And if you have already started a family, it makes sense to buy family medical insurance for everyone since the premium costs are really minor compared to the peace of mind rendered.

Buy Health Insurance

Another solution for people who prefer to rely on the heavily subsidized group insurance plans is to buy temporary health insurance whenever they leave their current employment. For example, although their new jobs will also provide a new adequate group policy, that may not become in force for another few weeks and this is where a low cost temporary health insurance can help. However, the onus is on you to be mindfully aware of the lapse in your individual health coverage and proactively buy temporary medical insurance for such situations.

Similarly, when you are suddenly laid off from your work, perhaps due to the economic recession, remembering to buy temporary health insurance may be the last thing on your mind. That can be rather dangerous especially if you cannot get a suitable job for a long time which is very possible given the gloomy global financial outlook. That is why, even though temporary medical plans are very cheap, a permanent medical insurance may be a better solution for most people instead. Such private medical insurance provides coverage as long as you pay your premiums punctually and usually policy termination is only after 65 years of age.

Note that the premium for temporary medical health insurance depends on the age of the insured. Unlike permanente insurance with a fixed monthly premium, you have to pay progressively higher premiums as you grow older. In fact, the costs of temporary health insurance may seem prohibitive at the age of 50 and above. This is because the premium for permanente insurance is spread over the lifetime of the insured while for temporary health insurance, it is only for a year at most. That is why it may seem inexpensive to buy short term medical insurance when you are young and forget about the increasing costs in future.

Some temporary medical health plans are available in terms of 3, 6 ,9 or 12 months and they are often priced such that you only need to pay slightly more for a full year of coverage compared to the minimum 3 months. You need to gauge for yourself whether you are paying for extraneous coverage and it is actually increasing your insurance expenses when compared to just buying a low cost medical insurance from Kaiser, Aetna, Humana etc.
 
Temporary health insurance are not suitable for everyone, even if it seems much more inexpensive initially compared to individual medical insurance. Actually, they are designed with international expatriates in mind that have to work in different countries on a non permanent basis. It is difficult and expensive for them to buy health insurance of a long term nature since they do not live and work in a country for more than a year.