My Premium Has Doubled
Has your insurance company given you the option to switch to another plan? Usually, when you receive notice of a rate increase, you should also be provided with options to move to a different health plan with that insurance company. The alternative plans that might be offered to you would likely be a plan with a higher deductible and a reduction in benefits. It might be worth considering a reduction in benefits in order to obtain a substantially lower monthly premium. 3 CommentsLeave a comment |
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I am stuck with my health insurance because I am on a few medications and no other insurance company will approve me. My insurance is OK, but the rate keeps going up like twice a year. I have had the insurance for 3 years and what I am paying now has more than doubled since I started on the health insurance plan. I called my broker and wanted to know why, and he told me the rate keeps going up because my insurance company does not offer my plan anymore. Why would that matter? What can I do?
You are currently insured under what is referred to as an old portfolio health plan. Health insurance companies will often introduce new plans in an attempt to keep up with the demands of a changing industry. The current trend seems to be more health plans with higher deductibles, greater coinsurance amounts and reduced maximum benefit amounts on certain covered services, like prescription drug coverage. When an insurance company makes a rate change, they will look at the loss ratio for a particular health plan in their portfolio and attempt to adjust the rates on that particular plan in order to cover the projected claims from members on that plan. So, when you are on a health plan that is no longer offered by your insurance company, there are no new members joining the plan that help keep the claims ratio low on that plan. So, after time, the only people still covered under that particular plan are people that are unable to switch insurance companies due to a pre-existing medical condition. So, it is likely that the plan you are on is more inclined to suffer a greater rate increase each time the insurance company modifies their rates.
Yes, they did tell me that I could pick a different plan. The only problem is that the options they gave me have higher payments on prescriptions or they don’t even cover prescriptions. Or the deductibles are really high or they only give me like $500 a year in prescriptions. My medications add up to $250 a month, so that would not work for me.
Comment by Sergio — November 24, 2006 @ 7:23 am
Even though your premium has doubled, the plan you are currently on seems to be your best option, given the cost of your current medications. If the premium continues to increase, it may become more sensible for you to switch to a less comprehensive plan with your current insurance company. You need to calculate that annual savings in your premium payment by switching to a new plan and consider doing this once your savings would outweigh the annual cost of your prescriptions.
Comment by admin — November 24, 2006 @ 7:28 am
I have recently purchased health insurance because the company that I worked with and had group health policies went bankrupt. We only received a 6 days notice for the coverage to end, which suffice to say, wasn’t a lot of time to get on a new plan. So I looked for online health insurance quotes and found one that I liked and applied. It was a $5000 deductible Health Savings Account plan, because my attempt to sign with a similar plan as the group plan was denied without explanation. So the rate I ended up with for this HSA plan has been twice as high as what they originally stated on their website. I then learned that the price shown on the website was Tier 1 rate and the lowest rate, and that I would be placed in the highest Tier 4. Do you have any idea what affects these rates so much? Could it really be that I have high blood pressure?
Comment by Jason — June 4, 2009 @ 10:25 am