When you mention health insurance most people picture
traditional group or individual health insurance, designed to
cover you in the long term and allowing for routine visits to
the doctor and such things as prescription drug coverage.
However, for many people, such as those who are between jobs or
in part-time or temporary agency employment, traditional health
insurance is not always readily available. In these and similar
circumstances you may therefore decide to turn to short term or
temporary health insurance to protect you in the event of
accident or illness.As its name suggests, temporary health
insurance is designed to cover a short term gap in normal health
insurance coverage for any number of different reasons and is
issued in the expectation that it will be your intention to
resume normal health insurance coverage in due course.
Accordingly, it is designed essentially for accidents and injury
and provides cover for emergency treatment and medical expenses
such as ambulance fees, intensive care treatment and limited
hospital expenses, including such things as x-rays. Temporary
health insurance does not however normally cover routine medical
treatment, including regular visits to a physician, and
generally also excludes any pre-existing conditions. This said,
as with health insurance plans in general, short term health
insurance plans do vary quite considerably and some provide
greater coverage than others.
Temporary plans also vary considerably in terms of cost and
typically range from a monthly premium of $25 up to $100, with a
deductible of anywhere from about $200 to $5,000. Plans today do
however generally have quite reasonable maximum payouts of
generally between about $1 million and $2 million. Plans can
normally be taken out for anywhere from 30 days to 6 months and,
in some cases, as much as one year. It is rare however for a
short term plan to run for more than 12 months.
Temporary health insurance is very widely available today and
a simple search on your favorite Internet search engine will
produce a long list of companies providing temporary health
insurance plans. The Internet also provides the ideal place to
compare different plans.
Remember however when you are looking for short term cover to
check out not only the plan (including such things as the cover
provided, plan exclusions, monthly premium and deductible) but
also the company providing the plan to ensure that you not only
get the cover you require, but also the service you need when it
comes to making a claim.
