Indemnity Insurance
Group Plans
Short Term Individual Policies
COBRA
Group Plans
These are paid for in part or in full by your employer. If your
company doesn't pay for the entire cost of the plan, then the rest is typically
taken out of each paycheck automatically. Some companies offer their
employees a choice between types of plans, and some select one plan for
everyone. There are two types of groups plans: HMOs and PPOs.
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| You pick a doctor / primary-care physician / gatekeeper from a list. When you need to see a doctor, you call the gatekeeper and make an appointment. Even though you know the gatekeeper isn't the specialist that you need, you still need to go see the gatekeeper first and let him/her make the appointment for you for the specialist. Each visit to the gatekeeper or the specialist will cost about five or ten dollars as a co-pay to the doctor, and HMO pays for the rest of the bill. | Unlike HMO, each time you need to see a doctor, you can pick from the list of doctors given to you by the PPO. You get a discount for each visit, but you are responsible for paying the entire bill until you have met your deductible. |
Short Term Individual Policies
During the period when you are out of school and looking for a job,
you still should have health insurance. If you are on your parents'
insurance policy, you might want to stay on it until you've find a job
that has health benefits. But if you have health insurance through
school and you know you'll find a job soon with health benefits, you might
want to consider short term insurance instead of trying to add your name
to your parents' policy. Many insurance providers offer short-term
insurance policies to cover you from the time you graduate until you find
a job or for the time in between jobs. These temporary policies are
inexpensive, about $30 to $65 a month, but they have high deductibles.
COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus
Budget Reconciliation Act)
By law, a company more than nineteen employees is required to offer
you health insurance after you quit or get fired from your job, unless
you're fired for gross misconduct. COBRA was designed to let you
continue the same coverage for up to eighteen months after you leave your
job. However, you need to pay for the insurance yourself. So
if your former employer paid for half of the insurance payments and take
the other half from your paycheck, now you'll be paying for both halves.