The Right Health Insurance Company

Finding a health policy that meets your cost and coverage needs is a difficult task, but the work doesn't stop there. To ensure the best health care, it's wise to evaluate both the health insurance company and it's affiliate health care network.

This page:

  • Lists a few criteria for evaluating a health insurance company.

  • Suggests sources for consumer information on health policies.

There are a few major questions you'll want to ask about any health insurance company.

Rating your health insurance company

One crucial measure of any health insurance company is its financial reputation. This is easy to research with free resources like Moody's, A.M. Best and Weiss, all of which publish health insurance company ratings and information free to you.

eHealthInsurance, the largest online health insurance marketplace, will give you health insurance company ratings up front, before you apply. (Read more about their health insurance providers here.)

Quality of care under a health policy

What could be more important than the quality of health care you receive when you need it? Under an indemnity insurance plan, you select your doctor, so if you are unsatisfied with the quality of health care you are receiving, it is easy to switch physicians.

Under a managed care health policy, however, the network of doctors you'll be working with is pre-selected. Trusting the physicians and feeling confident about the health care you'll be receiving in the given network isinvaluable.

Checking the employment and educational histories of the network's doctors is another important test of the quality of any insurance comapny. The American Medical Association provides information about any physician in the United States. The Directory of Medical Specialists, which can be found at your local pubic library, also lists information about doctors. Use these free resources to your advantage. More information regarding how to research the doctors on your health care network follows.

Health insurance company customer satisfaction

How quickly your health insurance company responds to your requests and questions is important, both for your health and for your wallet.

You'll be in contact with your health insurance company often enough that prompt and effective communication can make a huge difference. This is a difficult quality to guage before you actually purchase a policy, however you can still get a sense of this by calling the health insurance company's customer service representative and asking him or her a question a question.

Does it take them long to answer your question? Are you put on hold? If you request information to be sent to you, how long does it take?

You can also try to "test" the company's commitment to policy holder satisfaction and how much they are willing to do to help you above and beyond the bare minimum required by law. Ask a health insurance company representative if you can switch primary care physicians mid policy year? If not, they may be inflexible about other personal concerns and indifferent about your personal and health care needs.

Unfortunately, while financial information about a health insurance company is fairly easy to come by, specific measures of patient satisfaction with a particular health policy are not. You'll probably have to pay for this information.

Consumer Check or Consumer Reports both offer heath insurance company and health policy evaluations. We recommend applying for a couple of plans, seeing what fits your budget (and your care needs), then checking them against each other using a paid service.

Ehealthinsurance.com will give the financial ratings on health insurance companies up front. Choose a policy, or better yet 2 or 3, then apply online and compare the health policy satisfaction numbers once you're approved.

Additionally, you should read up on different health plan options, refresh yourself on the medical insurance basics, and learn more about how online health insurance quotes work.

Want to learn even more?

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