Preferred provider organizations (PPOs) seek to give both the benefits of traditional health plans and the money savings of HMOs. They do this by paying higher benefits as a reward for your using the doctors or hospitals they preselect for that purpose.

Disability Insurance

Disability insurance does not pay for health care; rather it pays for lost wages caused by a disabling injury or illness.

How Health Insurance Is Priced

Ask anyone how health insurance is priced and you will get a simple answer: expensively! Beyond that, there are underwriting criteria used by health insurance providers, whether they are for-profit or, like Blue Shield/Blue Cross, nonprofit.

Underwriting Criteria

Age

The older you are, the more likely you are to get sick; therefore, the higher your health insurance premiums will be.

Number of people covered

Many people buy family coverage rather than individual policies. This means that there will be adults as well as minor children protected by the same plan. Some companies will charge based on the size of the family. Others charge a basic family rate without regard to the number of members.

Gender

Unlike life insurance, where women get the better end of the bargain than men, in health insurance women often pay higher premiums. This is based on health insurance industry statistics which indicate that the female of the species tends to need medical care more often than the male.

Health history

Insurance operates on statistical probabilities. If you have had a poor health history, statistically you are more likely to have a more expensive health care future. This, in turn, means that you will pay higher premiums-if you can get health insurance at all.

Occupation

The more likely zyou are to suffer injury or illness because of the work you do, the more likely the health insurance industry will be to charge excessively for benefits. This may be well and good for professional deep-sea divers. But the industry has begun to stretch the concept into areas that have nothing to do with the inherent danger of the work.

Lifestyle

In your application for health insurance you will be asked questions about your personal habits. Your answers will have a lot to do with the cost of your premiums. If you smoke, you will probably pay more for health insurance. If you drink to excess, you will probably pay more for health insurance. If you are known to be under a great deal of stress, you may pay more for health insurance. London does reward the health care Insurance consumer with lower premiums if they have practiced good health policies.

One of the most important things you can do as a health care consumer is to engage in preventive care. Not only will you be able to spot serious diseases at an early stage, thereby increasing your chances of effective treatment and cure, but you should be able to save money as well, since it is usually far less expensive to treat a disease when it's a molehill rather than a mountain.