The company that you get your health insurance from probably isn’t telling you absolutely everything that you need to know about your health insurance policy. This doesn’t mean that they are outright lying to you. It’s more like a sin of omission.
Insurance companies, and agents, know that most consumers aren’t especially educated in how health insurance works. They realize that if you don’t fully understand something it is difficult to ask questions about it. The things that they are neglecting to tell you about are things that are to their advantage. To protect yourself, it is best that you learn just a little bit about what to watch out for.
Does your health insurance policy come with a deductible? Most people realize that they will need to pay out of their own pocket for their medical care until the amount of the deductible has been reached. What your health insurance company isn’t telling you is that meeting the deductible does not automatically mean that you can count on your insurance company to pay for the rest of your medical care for that year.
People are given a false sense of safety when their health insurance company implies that the only thing the consumer will ever have to pay for is the deductible. According to the Center for Studying Health System Change, the average amount of money that a person pays for out of pocket after meeting their deductible was $3,091 in 2006, (the most recent year where this data is available from). This amount had increased by 26% since 2001. Your health insurance company didn’t mention this to you, though. My best guess is that if you knew the truth about deductibles, you might decide to try and get health insurance from a different company, that doesn’t require you to pay a deductible.
Your health insurance company also isn’t going to specifically point out that the insurance you are paying for won’t cover the costs of therapy for your mental health. If this is something that you have any reason to believe that you might need, make sure to check with the insurance company before you sign the paperwork. If you are getting your health insurance through your work, this is especially important to investigate.
In 2008 there was a law called The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. It required companies who had more than 50 workers to have the same deductibles, copays, and limitations for treatment for mental health or addictions as it would for medical or surgical treatment. However, the law doesn’t actually require insurance companies to cover mental health treatment at all, and so many of them decided to stop covering it, (even if they used to cover it in the past). You may need to ask some very specific questions to your insurance agent, in order to find out what types of mental health treatment the policy will cover, (if any).
Image by Steven Depolo on Flickr