Group Health Care Insurance Choices

Picking out health care insurance is an important decision for you and your family, and for better or worse it is often limited by your group health care insurance if you happen to work for an organization that provides it. Group health care insurance can actually be good for some people due to the simple fact that these plans offer more affordable rates when compared to private insurance providers.

This is so because employers, labor unions and the like make deals with insurance companies to get group rates for bringing so many people into the policy. On top of this, group health care insurance is usually made even more enticing because the employer or union will cover part of your premium.

Group Insurance - The Different Types

There are a few variations on the group health care insurance theme. Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are plans in which you have to get all your health care from a short list of approved doctors. To see a specialist, you have to get a referral from your doctor if you want your insurance to cover it. In addition, such plans also have other rules for after-hour and emergency room visits.

Another type of group health care insurance is the preferred provider organization (PPO). A PPO gives you more choices in picking providers; you can choose to see a provider outside the list and still be covered, but it will be cheaper for you to pick a provider from the list. This is what most PPO users do, but it’s nice to have extra options in certain cases like emergency room visits and the like.

Another type of group health care insurance is the point of service plan (POS). A POS is similar to a PPO plan in its flexibility (it’s not as rigid as a HMO), but in this case it is your doctor that organizes your care, including any visits to specialists that you need.

The main things that you need to worry about in picking a group health care insurance plan (if you have a choice with your employer) are what kind of access the policy gives you to hospitals, physicians, and specialists like dermatologists and what kind of emergency/after-hour care coverage the plan has.

Usually, only high paying jobs will allow you to choose between an HMO, PPO, or POS. Most workers have no options and have to simply take what their employer gives them.