Health Insurance for Self-Employed

When you are a self-employed, finding a health insurance is a bit hard. However, there are still ways to find and search for a good health insurance with a wide coverage and a manageable price. The price may vary depends on where you are located, your age and the type of policy you need.

Today, there are a lot of Americans who are self-employed; either they are freelancers or independent contractors. While some are just part-timers, and others have already retired then they just put up their own business.

No matter what is their job title, searching for the best health insurance is their problem, more and more American adults lacks their health insurance every year, probably they want to have an health insurance but they don’t know how to apply for one. While for the others, they are so much busy finding about their dream job, or managing their own business and their health insurance is being set aside.

The health-care reform law is now tackling this problem; their plan is to promote affordable health insurance for the self-employed workers. They will be able to purchase health insurance through “state insurance exchanges” and these are intended also for the workers who have low and moderate incomes.

Ways to get a Self-employed Health Insurance:

From your Previous Employer

Other employers allow their retired employees to buy low-cost health insurance through their company; others are even giving subsidized portion of the premium, so it won’t be too expensive for their former employees, and there are doing that as a courtesy for the employees’ long term of service with the company. So don’t hesitate to ask your previous employer if they can help you get an health insurance before seeking for other options.

Join Private Groups

Groups like Churches, alumni associations or even bar associations offer low-cost health insurance to their members with group coverage rates. Choose the best groups that is relevant to what you are currently into, example if you are running your own business, you can try to check your local Chamber of Commerce, or other local government that can offer you health insurance plans. You can also try to check if your local village offers health insurance for its members, use your networks, there are a lot of groups to choose from.

Start a Small Business Group              

If you have a small business and have few employees, you are eligible to purchase a small group health insurance plan, some health insurers offers a great health insurance deal for small groups with at least two employees. You can also seek assistance to a health insurance broker to help you set things up.

Stay Employed

You can consider getting a part time job even though you have your own business already, you apply to a job that only requires you 4 hours of your time, plus you can earn extra money to pay for your health insurance. If you are working for 20 hours a week, you may be qualified to get a health insurance. 16% of al firms offer health insurance to their part-time workers.

Consult Health Insurance Agent

Dealing directly with an health insurance agent is also an option if you are a self-employed. Do some research, talk to different agents and compare their rates and coverage of the plans they offer, you can also ask your friends or colleagues who are also self-employed. In that way, you can get many ideas, and you can choose for the best offers.

Even when you are busy running your own business, or busy doing other things, do not forget to get a hold of a health insurance.

Medical Tourism Facilitator

Medical Tourism provides practical option for affordable healthcare, there has been an increase of medical travel companies that came out to help clients to find the way to look for a medical solution around the world. So who is this behind the research for the best offers for a transportation company, hotels, recovery centers and even health insurance companies? They are called medical tourism facilitators.

They give assistance to the clients who are in need of immediate medical attention, they serve as the middle man, and they often add a little cost to the procedure, as the payment for their task. Using a regular travel agency, hotel and flight bookings are more expensive compared to getting the service of a medical tourism facilitator. The clients just have to sit back and relax, and wait for his/her booked schedule.

But other medical tourism facilitator, do not add any additional cost to the process, because there are these healthcare facilities who are paying these medical tourism facilitators to look for clients as a part of their marketing strategies, they offer health care service, and are seeking for international patients to fill out their empty rooms. They are allotting some budget and are willing to share part of their normal fees with a medical tourism facilitator who brings help to assist the patient.

Medical tourism facilitators plays an important role for the safe travel of the patients overseas, they also serve as the organizers and advocates. A lot of people seek for overseas healthcare, but they don’t have any idea where to start and where to inquire, they don’t know which destination are available and appropriate for their medical needs. They do not know the accredited and certified medical centers outside their countries or what travel considerations do they have to learn for different destinations.

 

Most foreign doctors can fluently speak in English, but the most of the time, their receptionist cannot. Time difference is also one of the major challenge in contacting a medical center abroad, but medical tourism facilitator have already build relationships with these medical centers and they know who to contact to get timely information and efficiently move process along.

For medical patients in an unfamiliar environment, it is always important for them to have middle man who can be their voice. This avoids arising issues, such as misunderstanding from the agreement on the cost and procedures. The patient should not be the one to deal with these, or if a flight has been delayed, the facilitator will be the one to check on every detail and just relay it to the patient. With a facilitator, the patient has to talk to one person only if she/he has some clarifications of something to check. The facilitator can take care of all these necessary scheduling changes. They respond quickly and efficiently to any issues that might occur while the patient is overseas.

For the patients who are clueless, the questions are endless, but a medical tourism facilitator can educate the patients on all the things that they need to learn prior deciding which medical health center to go. They provide accurate information to the patients. Planning on taking to go overseas especially when healthcare is involve is a challenge, but when a medical tourism facilitator enters the scene, they fill this role through giving variety of options for the patients to have a wonderful experience.

But there are also important things a patient should know before negotiating to a medical facilitator:

1.    How long has the facilitator been in the medical health industry?

2.    How many patients has he/she managed?

3.    Does he/she has testimonials from previous patients/

4.    Can he/she provide all the roles for a valuable experience for the patient?

If you are satisfied with all the answers, that facilitator might be the right one you are looking for, to a successful overseas medical experience.

Advantages of Medical Tourism

Medical Tourism is a term used when a person travels to another country to seek or receive medical attention, it could be major surgeries like: Breast implants, heart surgery or dental work. In the modern age, medical tourism has become a global trend because of its advantages and benefits, and its affordable surgery cost.

In most cases, hospitalization procedures are much costly than an air fare ticket when done in one’s country. Good example to this is a coronary bypass, an American may spend almost $90,000 in the USA but when he goes to India, it will only cost him $15,000. The total cost in America is much expensive than all the accommodations in India such as: Plane ticket, hotel rooms and the whole medical expenses.

There are really a lot of benefits when traveling to another country for medical care and treatments. Health Care Issue in the USA has affected its citizens without health care insurance, because some people who don’t have Health Insurance cannot afford the proper medication or treatment that they need.

Singapore, Thailand and India are some of the most popular destinations when it comes to affordable cosmetic surgery and other medical treatments. Hotel accommodations and airline tickets are also very affordable; it’s less than getting the procedure performed in the US.

Undergoing to a surgery in never fun, but choosing to have a medical vacation, may help you recover much faster; others combined their medical treatment and their luxury vacation at one time, like recovering on a tropical resort or any vacation spot.

There are also countries in Latin America and Eastern Europe who also provides opportunity and a great experience to a new culture. Other countries like Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba also gives their patients better medical treatment while they are in their Country.

As long as there are people who needs medical treatment and who only has limited options of medical healthcare in their countries, people will continue to seek for other options abroad and medical tourism will continue to be a global trend.