Health insurance premiums seem to climb year after year at a rate not many of us can live with. To this end, a question that comes up, what can I do to help moderate the price increases, or even cut my health insurance premiums? I will focus first on what individuals with individual coverage can do and then groups. Individuals within groups unfortunately have fewer choices, but it is not a lost cause.
Those on individual health insurance are not tied to any employer based decisions which is key to being about to make changes when you need to do so. Those in group insurance plans are much more restricted. So, first off, unless you are undergoing current medical treatment or have acquired other uninsurable reasons since you got on the current plan, you can always move between carriers to whichever one happens to have the best rates going on at the moment. Often one of the carriers in a market will be looking to increase market share and their rates are highly competitive.
You can swap your current plan for a higher deductible as well. Generally for those in power to choose the health plans, a higher deductible or more cost share covered by the insured individual, the lower the premium will be. Of course if you are already on a high deductible plan you may not have a lot of upward increase in deductible before there are no other plans to choose.
If you are on medicine for high blood pressure or other ailments that can often be negated thru enhanced diet control and more exercise, it may be worth a visit to your doctor to see what you can do to perhaps improve your health and get off a medication or two. Sometimes getting off of certain medicines and showing a clean bill of health off these medicines over a period of three, six, or even twelve months will allow a new application to be reviewed in which they drop your rates to standard levels. In some cases this alone could drop your premiums by 20% and you would feel better at the same time.
For those who control group benefit plans your options are usually similar to what individuals can change. If you are a fully insured plan, where the insurance company is taking all of the risk, different plan designs and carriers may offer improved premiums. The additional of wellness programs and forced participation in these programs can result in cost savings over time as the health of the insured population improves. However if you are self insured there is more that can be done to cut costs.
For self insured groups you have quite a bit of control over the actual benefits offered within the plan. That is subject to change to some degree in 2014 under healthcare reform but at present it is still an option. You can take benefits which are being over utilized and change the structure of those benefits and add more cost sharing or in some cases eliminate those benefits altogether. One example of such a benefit eliminated from many plans not too long back is bariatric surgery. It was a very costly benefit used by few that ran the cost of the insurance plan up for the employers.
Self insured groups can also fairly easily charge more for smokers and to other groups who create higher risks and tend to create higher medical costs. This may not save as much for the group overall as it may for those who live healthier lifestyles.
Insurance is by its very nature a risk sharing scenario where healthy and sick all pay into the pool to cover the illnesses for everyone based on plan design. Thus some get back more than they put in and others put in far more than they take out. In fact with healthcare most would feel they put in more than they get back out all the time, however when they need the care they want the fund to be in place to take care of them. It is the putting in more than you get out coupled with the increasing premiums that tend to make people upset and ask why does the premium keep rising and what can I do about it?
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