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How to evaluate health insurance companies?

Scouting for a suitable health policy that is within your budget and yet fully meets health coverage needs is indeed a daunting task. When you are planning which insurance company to tie up with for the best possible individual health insurance or group health insurance coverage, there are quite a few things to consider – and it is not just the premiums and out-of-pocket costs you will incur.

It is extremely important to evaluate the insurance company you wish to associate with. The insurance company must be sufficiently well-known, reliable and enjoy a good track record.

Insurance professionals will tell you to examine three different areas to evaluate the insurance company:

= Insurance company’s financial rating and stability

= Quality of health care the company is capable of providing.

= Levels of customer satisfaction

An essential feature of any health insurance company is its financial stability. This is easy to find out with free resources like Moody's, A.M. Best and Weiss, all of which publish health insurance company ratings and other related information. Nowadays, health insurance portals will offer insurance company ratings before you buy.

Secondly, examining the quality of healthcare the insurer provides has to be ascertained.  For instance, under an indemnity insurance plan, you select your doctor. If you are not satisfied with the quality of health care you are receiving, you should be able to change your physician. Ask a health insurance company representative if you can switch primary care physicians mid policy year? If the answer is negative, the company may be inflexible about other personal healthcare concerns as well.

Under a managed care health policy, the network of doctors who will attend to you is pre-selected. Trusting and developing faith in these physicians is of paramount importance. To help you know about the physicians, the American Medical Association provides information about every physician practicing in the USA. The Directory of Medical Specialists, which are rampantly available in local libraries, also carries information about doctors in the US.

Thirdly, you have to find out about customer satisfaction. An insurance company must be able to promptly and efficiently respond to patients' requests and this is critically important. You will be in contact with your insurer often enough and a good rapport with the insurance company will make a huge difference concerning your satisfaction with that company. The National Committee for Quality Assurance also provides an online Report Card that allows you to compare healthcare plans based on several criteria that includes customer satisfaction.

When comparing different health insurance companies and their various health plans, you need not only to do general research about the company but also study whether the insurer will provide the forms of care that are specifically important and needed by you for your situation.

You will have to seek clarifacations to a host of questions like - Are there enough of the kind of doctors you want to see? If you want to see a specialist, can you refer yourself or must your primary care doctor refer you? Do you need approval from the plan before going into the hospital or getting specialty care? Where will you go for care? Are these places near where you live?

Once you have done your overall pre-study on health insurance companies' customer service, financial stability and healthcare quality, your deciding on the health insurance company will become that much easier.