We have been hearing more than a few of horror stories regarding insurance providers that fail to pay claims or refuse to cover specific serious illnesses. In some cases, hospitals and physicians may not be reimbursed after patients are treated. Insurance providers are actually a form of business and they are also driven by profit, not the intention to help people, although they may say otherwise in advertising materials. In many cases, when facing with the probability of paying a significant amount of claim, insurance providers could simply look for ways and legal reasons not to pay. Unfortunately, chances are, they do find them. In this case, it is consumers who will suffer for such a situation. Many consumers fail to realize that there are some loopholes that could help providers find legal reasoning not to pay. In this case, insurance providers are at a huge advantage, because they are very familiar with inner mechanisms of insurance industry; while consumers could know very little or nothing at all.
When they are informed that the insured is dealing with a serious illness, insurance providers could actually go to great lengths, explaining the limitation of their coverage, something that they may deliberately hide when consumers signed the contract. Unfortunately, many people are keeping their insurance policy contracts in the filing cabinet and they don’t look at them again until they receive a denial letter from the provider. In this case, consumers should really make sure that insurance providers have explained about the benefits and coverage. This is important because consumers are typically at a disadvantage due to their lack of influence and knowledge about the insurance industry. For many of them, the task of getting paid is an enormous undertaking. Health insurance isn’t the same with car insurance. Buyers know that coverage on transmission and engine is standard, while power windows and interior are often optional.
Overall, health insurance can be more ambiguous and determining the “standard” health insurance coverage can be somewhat more difficult. That’s the reason why many policy holders are surprised to know that they don’t have coverage for specific medical conditions or treatments when they read that “benefits are denied” in the hospital bill. That’s the reason why health insurance is often considered as a necessary evil; something that is essential, but could cause a lot of difficulties due to many reasons. Purchasing, maintaining and claiming health insurance can be a time-consuming, daunting and frustrating task.
In general, we may need to make sure that a specific insurance lender is really paying for certain medical conditions and treatments. We could get this information after discussing with specific individuals who have received their claims. We should make sure that health insurance plans could give us a better peace of mind. Reliable health insurance plan is something that we need and we should be able to balance between need and wants. We should also make sure that we will get coverage for specific illnesses, drugs, treatments and doctors.