Apart from normal doctor visits and medications, most of us buy health insurance to protect our assets against big medical expenses. Published reports indicate that up to 50% of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are related to uncovered medical bills.

Injuries in serious auto accidents or other serious, unexpected events can easily generate over a $100,000 in medical charges. This editor and family would have been wiped out financially when, during child delivery, my wife had a cardiac arrest resulting in a brain injury and permanent disability. With good insurance coverage, medical expenses of over $300,000 were covered, and with good disability insurance, a significant amount of her salary was replaced.

Annual double-digit increases in health insurance cost are causing some very alarming trends in the U.S. Increasing numbers of citizens can not afford coverage and feel shut out of the healthcare system.

If you want health coverage, but feel you cannot afford it, use this site for more research. Insurance companies and other providers continue to develop new health plans, and you may be surprised to find coverage that can at least protect against big medical expenses.

Your Health

One of the obstacles to purchasing affordable individual and family health plans is what the insurance companies call “pre-existing conditions”. These are health problems for which you have been or are currently being treated by your doctor and are part of you health records.

In general, insurance companies handle pre-existing conditions for individual medical insurance in one of three ways:

They will offer coverage on a “rated-up” basis, which means you will be accepted for the plan but at a higher cost.
Insurance coverage will be offered, but the pre-existing conditions will be excluded from coverage for a period of time. You may also be “rated up”.
You will be denied coverage.

Many of us consider ourselves “healthy”, but find that the insurance company has a different definition of health when it comes to issuing a health insurance plan. The advantage of group health insurance is that, because of federal and state laws, it must be issued regardless of pre-existing conditions, although these conditions may be excluded from coverage for up to 12 months for regular enrollment.

It is important to note that groups as small as two people who are self-employed in a full-time business can buy group health insurance. If you have your own full-time business with one employee (which can be a spouse), you can buy group health insurance which might have been denied as an individual plan.