How To Get Cheap Health Insurance Online In Iowa

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

Health Insurance is expensive no matter where you live. Here in Iowa nearly 17% of all the state's residents cannot afford health insurance of any kind. If your place of employment or an organization you belong to does not offer affordable group-rate health insurance then you have no choice but to look for cheap health insurance online.

The good new is that there are ways for you to bring down the cost of your health insurance.

Obviously there are dozens of websites that will let you quickly and easily compare costs for health insurance from different insurance companies, but before you jump on one of those sites you need to make sure you are structuring a policy that will let you get the cheap health insurance coverage that you want.

For example, you need to stop smoking and you need to stop using any tobacco products of any kind. If you want cheap health insurance this is just something you need to do. If you already have health insurance and you were a smoker when you first applied but have since quit, you need to tell your agent ? because you could very well be in for a nice reduction in your monthly premiums.

Losing weight is even more difficult than quitting smoking ? but if you are overweight you are going to pay more for your health insurance. If you can lose even a little weight you may find yourself in a lower-risk category and that could save you some real bucks each and every month.

Don't participate in dangerous sports or hobbies. Extreme sports or hobbies may get your adrenalin pumping, but they also drive up the cost of your health insurance every single month.

Can you increase your co-pay? Most health insurance policies require you to make a co-pay any time you visit the doctor's office or use most any health service. Many people have a 20% or 25% co-pay, meaning they pay up to 25% of the bill for a doctor's visit in cash at the time of the visit.

If you can increase your co-pay to 50% you can save quite a bit on your health insurance premium each month. Obviously this works best for people who do not see their doctor on a regular basis, but it is something for everyone to keep in mind.

And that brings us to your deductible. How much can you afford to pay for your own health needs each year before you even ask your insurance company to help you out? Consider your answer carefully as this is money you will have to come up with each and every year ? but the higher your health care deductible the lower your monthly health insurance premium will be.

If you still can't afford health insurance but you have a home or a savings account or other assets that you need to protect from an unexpected medical emergency, then you may want to consider purchasing a super-high deductible health insurance policy.

A policy with a deductible of $2,000 or more is very inexpensive. These policies are not designed to help you with your normal health costs each year (you'll pay for your own doctor's visits and even out-patient surgeries). What these policies are designed for is to protect your home and assets in the event that you should suffer a catastrophic accident or illness that puts you in the hospital with huge medical bills in the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Now that you know how to design a health insurance policy that will save you the most possible each and every month it's time to get online and start comparing prices for that policy at every insurance company that operates in the state of Iowa.

Don't fall into the trap of believing that you only need to make comparisons on just one website. Unfortunately that's not the case. Each website only compares a handful of the different insurance companies operating in Iowa. If you're serious about getting cheap health insurance online then you'll need to take the time to make your comparisons on at least 3 different websites.

Once you have done that then you can feel confident that the lowest price you have found really is the best price you're going to get on cheap health insurance online in Iowa.