California health insurance shoppers; are you up for a field trip? Let’s visit the Vitality website’s consumer-friendly quote engine where you can always access fast, free, easy, and convenient California health insurance plan quotes!
In order to gain access to your roster of affordable California health insurance plan quotes you’ll first need to enter in a couple of pieces of information that will help the quote engine generate your plan options in order of price: From lowest to highest premium per month. We’ll need your age (and that of others who would be covered by the plan) and your zip code – Age and zip code (where you live) are two (basic) components that go into calculating an estimated monthly premium for you and your family. Note that we said ‘basic’: It is important to keep in mind that once you apply for coverage and provide more detailed information about your family’s medical history your premium rate is subject to change.
As you look at the list of plan options, you’ll note that at the top of the page you’ll see a section containing a variety of options such as:
- Find by Deductible Range
- Find by Plan Type (Examples include: PPO, HSA, HMO)
- Find by Price Range
- Find by Company Name
So – in essence – the California health insurance shopper has the ability to parse up their list of plan options in whatever fashion they desire.
Now let’s look at the anatomy of a plan quote:
At the top of this article you’ll spot a picture featuring the layout of a plan quote at the Vitality quote engine. You can see an enlarged version of the California health plan quote by double clicking on that image.
Moving from left to right here’s what you’ll be looking at:
- The name of the California health insurance company whose plan you’re reviewing. Some might feature a designation called “Top Pick’: Plans marked with this logo are ranked in the top 90th percentile by online consumer preference. This designation is a reflection of consumer popularity and not a recommendation by our agency.
- Next; a notation about the plan type: Is it a PPO or Preferred Provider Organization; a HSA-compatible health plan (HSA plans are basically a subcategory of a PPO plan.); or – finally – a HMO or Health Maintenance Organization-type of plan (You can assume that the plan you are reviewing will be showing you cost figures such as annual deductible and coinsurance based on your use of in-network service providers by the way.).
- Your health plan’s annual deductible. Certain plans offer certain benefits that are not subject to the deductible. In conjunction with your California health insurance professional at Vitality, we’ll review that feature with you in more detail.
- ‘Doctor Copay’ – Pretty straightforward: You see a doctor; you pay this dollar amount at the time of your visit.
- Inpatient Hospital – Having met your annual deductible, this is the percentage of coinsurance you will be responsible for in the course of that plan year. While copay is expressed as a hard dollar figure, coinsurance is expressed as a percentage – the percentage you see in the plan quote will be your coinsurance obligation. Example: The coinsurance is 40% – you will pay 40 cents of every dollar up to your annual out of pocket maximum for the health care services you receive during the plan year.
- Rx Card – Here again, pretty straightforward: A check mark indicates the plan does feature prescription drug benefits. However, what isn’t straightforward is what those benefits are: Generic-only, generic and brand name prescription drug coverage; whether there is a separate deductible for prescription drugs. Always best to review ‘Plan Details’ and consult with your Vitality California health insurance professional for assistance on this important plan benefit!
- Maternity – Let’s you know if the plan you are looking at features maternity coverage. Remember: You must medically qualify for a California health plan with maternity coverage. That means you must have the plan in hand before becoming pregnant.
- View Plan Details – Click here and you’ll see your health plan’s benefits in much more detail. Reach out to us and we’ll review these plan details with you! Always remember: Our health plan quotes and client services are always 100% free.
- View Doctors & Hospitals – Do you have a family doctor you’re devoted to? If you’re shopping for a California health plan make certain your doctor is in the health insurance company plan’s provider network. Staying in-network is key to helping to hold down your family’s health care costs.
If you like what you see of the plan you have under review you can easily move on to the next step which is applying for the plan either by downloading the California health insurance plan application or applying for your California health insurance plan online. We’re fans of applying for your plan online – it speeds processing times and will typically eliminate concerns about errors or omissions on paper applications that slow or derail the application process.
Once again we do want to take this opportunity to stress that your client consultations with a Vitality team member are always free. Taking advantage of a great bargain like that and consulting with a member of our team about the California health insurance plan strategy that is uniquely right for you and your family can ensure peace of mind and at no added cost or inconvenience to the consumer: We’ll arrange an always free, careful and considerate client consultation at a time and place that is always most convenient to your schedule!
California health insurance shoppers: Are you transitioning from group health insurance California employers provide their employees to an individual California health insurance plan? It’s a good idea to understand what your emergency room coverage will be with the plan you have under consideration.
Adults have emergency medical needs – kids especially so. As such it is a good idea to know what your new health plan will cover should you or a family member ever need to visit an emergency room for medical care. There is always the possibility for different coinsurance obligations with different plans, so understanding how this component of your new health plan will work should be a part of your deliberations.
Here’s a couple of things to be aware of as it relates to emergency care and urgent care: It’s important to know the difference between the two and it’s also important to realize that if you’re seeking urgent care and you are within your plan’s service area, you should make it a point to seek out the services of an in-network provider as you’ll want to avoid the out-of-network cost burden.
Here’s where it’s best to have an advance game plan should urgent care ever be needed. Ask your doctor where you should go for urgent care should you or your children ever need it. After you get that information cross check it with that facility and/or the insurance company and make doubly certain that the urgent care provider is in-network.
Always carry your California health insurance card with you. It should be right there in your wallet or purse next to your driver’s license. Nowadays almost everyone has cell phones too – many of us have ‘smart phones’: Log in the phone numbers of family physicians, local hospitals and urgent care providers you might need to turn to in an emergency situation. Also: ‘Map’ the locations of these same health care providers in advance. Knowing where to turn, who to contact, and how to get to the services you need as quickly as possible will be key to quickly dealing with emergency situations with minimal stress. Oh and before we move on: There is always that possibility of a dental injury/emergency too: So please include the phone number of your family dentist!
Knowing who to turn to… That can also apply to knowing that the team of California health insurance professionals at Vitality is here to serve you as well. We’re here with our always free, always careful and considerate client consultations designed to ensure peace of mind as you formulate winning California health insurance and California dental insurance strategies for you and your family in all types of health care situations.
For California health insurance consumers that new California health insurance plan you’re reviewing could be a financial minefield! What in the world do we mean by that?!
If you’re a regular reader of the Vitality California health insurance blog, you now know formulating a sound California health insurance strategy involves knowledge of various important components of your health plan – annual deductibles, annual out-of-pocket maximum, generic-only prescription drug coverage and so on. How you decipher these various components and put them together in one health plan strategy that is uniquely right for you may be the key to avoiding heartache and disappointment in how your health plan performed for you when you were most dependent on it.
Let’s focus on one component of a health plan where choosing wrong or being unaware of how your plan actually works can come back to haunt you later down the line: Whether or not you select a plan with both generic and brand name prescription drug coverage. We’re going to tell you right up front: We firmly believe in a health plan that features both generic and brand name drug coverage. Today, one of the single biggest cost drivers in our country’s health care system is the cost of brand name prescription drugs.
You may be healthier than anyone you know. To date, your use of medicine may have been the two Tylenol you took for a headache four months ago. That’s great and long may that be the case! But consider this scenario: You purchase a health plan today with a generic-only prescription drug feature and three months from now you are diagnosed with a chronic illness. It will require a regular dose of an expensive brand name prescription medicine. The truth of the matter is that you may be forced to live with this chronic illness for years – maybe for life. You turn to your California health plan – with its generic-only prescription drug plan that you selected back in time when your only reference point were those two Tylenol you took – and you now realize that your prescription drug benefits are woefully inadequate to the task of helping to pay for the new and ongoing health care needs you now find yourself dealing with. With generic-only coverage you are looking at thousands of dollars in health care costs you’ll now have to pay for out of pocket each year.
What’s worse is that with health insurance, there are no do-overs: Your spotless medical history is no longer. It will now feature a chronic medical condition that might either make getting an ‘upgraded’ plan difficult to secure or – at the least – make the prospect of a new health plan strategy more expensive because your ‘new’ medical history will likely garner a higher premium rate.
The above scenario happens. Can it be avoided? Yes – but it requires that the California health insurance consumer look past the initial attractiveness of that lower premium that comes with the generic-only drug plan and think long term: Long term strategic planning with your California health insurance coverage is about considering the possibility that the way you use – or rather don’t use – prescription drugs today may not always be the case in the future. It’s about considering the fact that data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shows that at least half of all Americans takes at least one prescription drug, with one in six taking three or more medications.
How best to avoid this from happening to you and your family? After you’ve reviewed our wide array of health plan options and our always fast, easy, and free California health insurance plan quotes here at the Vitality website, reach out to us for our always free, always careful and considerate client consultations. We’ll help you create peace of mind health insurance strategies that work for you today and for what may come in the future.
