How To Get The Best Rates On Health Insurance In Maryland

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

Health insurance rates in Maryland, as in entire country, are into the stratosphere and there is no end in sight to their rise. It has gotten so bad that almost 17% of all Maryland residents can no longer afford to pay for health insurance at all.

If your place of employment offers health insurance you should consider signing up. Group health insurance is almost always cheaper than individual health insurance. However, if your company does not offer health insurance or if you are self employed then you will have to find other means for keeping your health insurance costs down.

The more you are willing to pay for what are called ?co-pays? the lower your monthly premium rate will be. Co-pays are payments that you make each time you visit the doctor or the ER or have lab tests or receive almost any other health care. If you increase your co-pay from 25% to 50% (meaning that you will pay for one half of each doctor?s office visit etc.) you should be able to reduce your monthly health care premiums by a minimum of 25% to 35%.

If you still can?t afford to pay for health care then it may be time for you to start thinking about health insurance in a whole new way. Traditionally people have looked to health insurance as something that paid for all or a large part of their yearly health care costs. But what if you began looking at health insurance from a different perspective?

What if health insurance were not something to help pay for every doctor?s visit? What if, instead, you look at health insurance as a life preserver that is only there to keep you from going under in the event of a major illness or a sudden catastrophe?

What if you think of health insurance only as something that is there to protect your home and your lifetime accumulation of assets in the event of a major health crisis that would otherwise wipe out everything you?ve spent a lifetime acquiring in the blink of an eye?

If you start to think about health insurance in these terms then you might consider buying an inexpensive high-deductible policy. By high deductible we mean a policy with a $2,000 or even higher deductible.

Obviously such a policy will not help pay any of your health costs in a normal year. You will pay for 100% of your doctor?s office visits, 100% of ER visits, 100% of routine lab work and so forth. What this insurance does is to guarantee that no matter what happens, no matter what accident befalls you or what sudden and unexpected illness suddenly strikes, the most you will have to pay for your health costs is $2,000 ? or whatever deductible you have decided on.

In this way your health insurance acts as a shield, protecting your savings, your home, and any other assets you have.

But regardless of what type of coverage you decide upon, you can still get the best rates on health insurance in Maryland if you go online and compare health insurance policies and prices at 2 or more of the sites which are specially designed to let you make fast and easy comparisons. By taking the extra time to compare prices on at least 2 different websites you will stand a better chance of finding the absolutely, positively best rates on health insurance in Maryland, saving yourself money year after year for many years to come.